Sparks' Notes

The Waves

2012-01-27T05:44:00.002-06:00

I have finally become a Virginia Woolf fan! I'm not sure if I just needed to encounter her a few times or needed to be in the mood to poetry to "get" her, but I finally get the obsession with her. I may not understand all that she's trying to say, but I understand her appeal.

I read Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse both a couple of years ago and while I liked both to some extent, I just didn't connect with Woolf. I prefer my novels to have at least character or plot, if not both! Woolf usually seems to have neither. But what she does have is beautiful, amazing language. And I finally got that this time, with The Waves.

I think it might be helpful to others coming to Woolf for the first time or who didn't like her at first to think of her as a poet, not a novelist. The Waves is really a book of poetry, not a novel. It doesn't matter if you can't quite figure out what's going on all the time or who's talking. What matters is the images she makes you see, the feelings she invokes.

The Waves covers the lives of a group of children as they grow up, age, and die. It compares life to the waves of the ocean, going in and out, ebbing and flowing. The children begin full of imagination and possibility. They truly believe if they close their eyes and believe hard enough, they can be anything, even a tree. Going to school begins to beat this out of you.

"So each night I tear off the old day from the calendar, and screw it tight into a ball...I revenge myself upon the day...You are dead now, I say, school day, hated day." Oh, how I have felt that way when I made a heavy line through a day on the calendar, either during a bad time at school or at work. This is what matters in the book, this feeling parts like this make you feel, not what happened to cause one of the characters feel this way.

One of the things I did feel that Woolf was saas that saying though was that we keep rushing forward to the next station in life, not realizing that in doing so we're rushing toward death. Makes you want to slow down! While every new day as a child is an adventure, every day begins to run together as an adult. You get up, you go to work, you come home, repeat, repeat, repeat. You can feel that monotony weigh down the characters toward the end. This work made me want to recapture some of that feeling of childhood - of viewing each day as an adventure.

Euripides

2012-01-26T05:38:00.003-06:00

In my quest to read all of the books I own, quite a few ancient works stand in my way! First up is a volume of all of Euripides' and Aristophanes' plays. Fortunately, I've read quite a few of them already so I don't have to read their entire works right now, but I've started working my way through Euripides. I haven't gotten as much out of these as I have some of the other Greek plays, so I'm just doing mini-reviews. Maybe I've read all the good ones already? I did read a lot in my Greek tragedies class for my MA...Anyway, fortunately Jean at Howling Frog Books is hosting a Greek Classic Challenge and hopefully that will help me keep working my way through all the Greek classics on my shelves!

Rhesus
I had couldn't remember hearing of Rhesus, but apparently he's in the Illiad. He's one of the Trojan soldiers. I thought this play was funny because they talk about how horrible Odysseus is, that he's such a sneak and won't fight face-to-face, but he was a Greek and this was written by a Greek. I suppose that's why in the end he wins and kills Rhesus, the mighty warrior. :)

"Among mortals the same man is not dowered by nature with universal knowledge; each hath his special gift appointed him, thine is arms, another's is sage counsel." I thought it was interesting that even back then they recognized that different people have different types of gifts.

The Cyclops
This is the only satyr play we have an example of, which was a fourth humorous play shown after a series of three tragedies in ancient Greek theatre. This really just told the story of Odysseus and the Cyclops, so I felt like I was missing something.

Heracleidae
This is about the children of Herakles, who are seeking protection after the death of their father. Eurystheus wants to kill them to prevent them for taking revenge upon him. A maiden must be sacrificed to ensure their safety and keep the city safe as it fights for them. Macaria, one of the daughters, volunteers. However, their mother helps capture Eurystheus, and they plan to kill him and they'll all be safe.

Shakespeare's Poetry

2012-01-25T05:34:00.034-06:00

Allie is hosting a Shakespeare Reading Month, so it seemed like a good time for me to finish reading the complete works of Shakespeare! In planning my trip to England last year, I told myself I couldn't visit Stratford-Upon-Avon until I'd read all his plays, so I finished those last year, but I couldn't finish up his long poems. Now seemed like a good time to remedy that, especially since I've been in more of a poetry mood this year.

I'm not sure why I dreaded reading Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece so much. I like epic poems like the Illiad and the Odyessey, the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost. And I like Shakespeare! But still, I dreaded reading these.

I'll admit I didn't get a lot out of Venus and Adonis. I think it can be read on two levels, as a poem of lust or a poem of love. I noticed a lot of the sweet phrases could also have a dirtier meaning! :) I kept stopping and going, "Um, does he mean what I think he means or is my mind in the gutter???" It was kind of funny.

My favorite lines were probably these:
"Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,
But Lust's effect is tempest after sun;
Love's gentle spring doth always fresh remain,
Lust's winter comes ere summer half be done;
Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;
Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies." 799-804

Apparently this poem was very popular during Shakespeare's life, which now that I think about it, makes me think that's pretty good evidence of Shakespeare writing the plays. Edward de Vere or Bacon could have realeased this poem without a problem, so why would they have put it out under Shakespeare's name? And if Shakespeare can write this and The Rape of Lucrece, why can't he have written the plays? They clearly seem to have been written by the same person. Hmmm.

As for The Rape of Lucrece, a 30-page poem about a rape doesn't sound that great, but I actually really liked the poem. It has a fantastically horrible villain that definitely seems similar to Richard III or some of the other great villains. Lucrece is so pure and focused on her love of her husband, like some of his later female characters, like Isabella from Measure to Measure. Tarquin offers Lucrece a choice - have sex with me willingly or I'll rape you, kill you, and kill another man and make it look like you two were doing it and I killed you both in defense of your husband. How evil is that?

The language Shakespeare uses when Tarquin first enters Lucrece's room is wonderful:
"Into the chamber wickedly he stalks,
And gazeth on her yet unstained bed.
The curatins being close, about he walks,
Rolling his greedy eyeballs in his head.
By their high treason is his heart misled,
Which gives the watch-word to his hand full swoon
To draw the cloud that hides the silver moon." 365-371

Both poems were surprisingly readable. I'm not sure if that's because by this point I'm fairly used to Shakespeare's language or if they may actually be a good starting point for someone who wants to read more Shakespeare but has trouble following all the plot in some of the plays because of the language. Both poems have fairly basic plots, so you can just soak in the language. I'm very excited to have finally read all of the works currently ascribed to Shakespeare!!!

The Old Curiousity Shop: First Impressions

2012-01-24T05:54:00.027-06:00

I'm about 100 pages in to The Old Curiousity Shop by Charles Dickens, and I thought I'd do a post about my first impressions for this week's post for Amanda's Charles Dickens Month celebration. Since Dickens' books usually have quite an array of characters, it will also serve as a way for me to sit down and make sure I know who all the key players are before I get confused!

Nell - So far, sweet little Nell is living up to her reputation as a lovely little girl. When I studied Dickens in one of my college classes I learned that people in America went to the docks to meet the ships coming in with the installment of this book that came right after a cliffhanger - does Nell live or die? I'm glad we can just go to midnight book release parties now instead of waiting in the shipyards for an anticipated release from across the pond!

Mr. Quilp - There's an evil dwarf as a main character??? Why did I not know this? This is giving this book a very fairy tale feel. He's an ugly, mean, arrogant old dwarf who is holding something over Nell.

Mrs. Quilp - Why oh why is a pretty young woman married to Quilp? What did he do to her? And she seems to think he's amazing even though she's terrified of him. She seems like an emotionally abused woman who for some reason won't stand up to him.

Nell's grandfather - I haven't quite figured him out. He definitely cares about Nell, who lives with him. But he's okay with her working too much and being in situations she probably shouldn't be in, plus apparently he owes money to Quilp. However, he does see through Nell's brother, which is good.

Fred - Nell's no good brother. It appears Nell will come in to some money at some point, and Fred wants it. He even comes up with a plan to have one of his no good friends marry her when she's old enough so they can split the money once it comes to her.

Dick Swiveller - Fred's friend and a swindler. He makes a habit of "buying" things he has no intention of paying for and has a list of streets he must avoid because of the shops where he owes money. He's the one Fred is trying to convinve to marry Nell.

Those are the main people so far. Something that I thought was interesting about the beginning of this book is that we start with a narrator who finds Nell on the street and helps guide her back home. There, he meets the key players and introduces us to them. Once that's done, he acknowledges the reader and says now that he's introduced us to the characters, he'll step back. I'm always interested in narration - the point of view an author chooses, if the narrator is involved in the story, if they're reliable, if it's a frame tell or flashback of some sort, etc. I can't really remember reading a set up quite like that before. I wonder if he'll come back at some point later or at the end. I'll soon find out!

A Room with a View

2012-01-23T05:44:00.002-06:00

Ergh!!! I had a great post about A Room with a View and it somehow got deleted!!! Blurg! I can remember none of the awesome things I had to say, so hopefully this will still convey how much I enjoyed this book and why you should read it!

First of all, I was surprised I liked this book so much. I read A Passage to India in school and didn't care for it. That may have been because I had to read it and five other lengthy, mostly boring books for a one-hour pass/fail class my freshman year of college. I had so much other reading and things to do that the books for that class didn't get much attention from me. I felt like it was pretty dry, so I was surprised when A Room with a View was so wonderful and a quick read, entertaining read. I suppose I'll have to give A Passage to India another shot sometime.

A Room with a View is about a young woman visiting Florence and Rome before journeying back to England. It was published in 1908 and takes place around that time, which was a time of massive change. England was moving from the Victorian age to the modern age. I know we've experienced massive change just in my lifetime with the prevalence of the internet, but can you imagine living back then? They were on the cusp of having technological changes with cars and electricity, but they were also experiencing social change with women fighting for the vote and the changing societal classes.

The novel focuses on this social change, with the main character starting out with a proper chaperone on her travels who dictates her behavior, but you begin to see changes as they travel and meet new people. One of those people is Mr. Emerson, who despite being an older man, is quite modern. He makes comments about one day women will be seen as equal and how a lot of the rules people follow are silly and how love is more important than following expectations. I adored him! He was so unexpected, although I suppose old people do tend to have more of a "tell it like it is" philosophy and he definitely had that. You shouldn't live by other people's expectations.

Forster also talks about how some people are so snobby and pretentious that they suck the life out of everyone around them. He demonstrates this through Cecil, who I just wanted to strangle. I wanted to shake Lucy and tell her to snap out of it and get away from him!

The novel was very similar to a Jane Austen novel - it captures a small part of society and has the same sort of feel, which I think makes the discussion of the more modern elements all the more striking. Lucy has to make a choice that none of the Austen heroines can make - love or independence? An Austen character might have to choose between love and comfort, but independence is never an option.

"It makes a difference, doesn't it, whether we fence ourselves in, or whether we are fenced out by the barriers of others?" Lucy can choose to fence herself in or not, whereas women even a decade earlier didn't have that option. "I don't see any difference. Fences are fences, especially when they are in the same place." The character speaking here is thinking of literal fences, but she has a point - a fence is still a fence. Someone told me the other day that every decision in life is a sacrifice. If we choose to marry, we sacrifice our independence. If we choose to have kids, we sacrifice time and money and freedom. If we choose one career over another, we sacrifice the other. It was an interesting way to think about things, and I thought it fit this book nicely.

I think fans of Austen who are looking for something new would enjoy this, as would people who are interested in the start of feminism and the modern age. I'm looking forward to reading Howard's End soon!

Media Free Day

2012-01-22T17:12:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was glorious! One of my goals for this year is to have a "media free" day once a month. No TV, no movies, no internet. By default, this basically means a mini-readathon for me! I can also choose to do things around the house, go out with friends, write, etc., but for the most part I'll end up reading. I decided to do this to be more conscious of how I spend my time.

Although I already read a lot, and read for hours on Saturdays anyway, I feel like I waste a lot of time screwing around on my phone looking at Facebook, Google Reader, my email and watching junk on TV. None of those things are bad, and I don't want to cut them out entirely, but I want to think about how I spend my time.

Despite having a sinus headache, which I usually would use as an excuse to zone out in front of the TV, I did a ton of reading. I just started with a young adult novel and then went on to other stuff after my head stopped hurting.

I managed to read The Truth about Forever by Sarah Dessen, The Heraceidae by Euripides, The Rape of Lucrece by Shakespeare, finished one political book and started another, and finished The Waves by Virginia Woolf. Not too bad! I'm already looking forward to next month's day! This did make me want to limit my TV watching more in general (I've already cut back some) and not waste so much time online. I hope everyone else had a happy reading weekend too!

Mowgli's Brothers and Two Friends

2012-01-19T17:28:00.000-06:00

I'm trying to read some of the short story collections I have, and read two very different stories recently!

Mowgli's Brothers by Rudyard Kipling
The Jungle Book is one of my favorite Disney movies. My brother and I watched the heck out of that VHS tape when we were little. So, I’d always thought I’d enjoy reading the original story by Kipling. In encountering Mowgli’s Brothers, I realized I had thought that The Jungle Book was a novel – not a short story collection. And, it’s the same short story collection that contains Rikki Tikki Tavi, which TERRIFIED me as a child. I HATED that mongoose. What’s that you say? The mongoose is the hero? I refuse to believe it! It’s an evil, evil monster, and I was horrified to learn that mongooses (mongeese?) are real! I have absolutely no idea what caused my terror, especially since my mom enjoyed the story because she hates snakes, but I still get the shivers when I hear the name of the book. I actually don’t mind snakes and often held and played with grass snakes when I was younger, so maybe that’s part of it and I felt sorry for them or something. I also remember the evil mongoose having terrifying red eyes that still haunt me. I should probably check it out at the library to see what was so scary, but I’m scared to! :)

So by the time I actually read Mowgli’s Brothers, I was a little on edge having relived my nightmares about Rikki Tikki Tavi. I really did not enjoy Mowgli’s Brothers. I’m not sure how much of that to place on Rikki Tikki Tavi and how much to blame Disney. Disney’s version of The Jungle Book is awesome! There are singing animals, lovable Baloo, the cute little wolves, and Mowgli having fun. Mowgli’s Brothers was much darker and sadly, kind of boring. Kipling skips the interesting stuff about what it would be like to grow up in a wolf pack and skips from Mowgli’s initial appearance as a toddler to his becoming a man and being banished. As a result, there wasn’t much to this story. I know Mowgli continues to make appearances in many other short stories by Kipling, and some of those are used as part of the Disney movie as well, but this just didn’t make me want to go out and read more. There was something very stilted in the language and so many references to the Laws of the Jungle that I felt like I was reading a law text book instead of an adventure story.

Two Friends by Guy de Maupassant

What a sad, tragic little story! It starts off as this uplifting story of friendship and how even in dark times, friends are there and you sometimes just need to go fishing together, to do something familiar and enjoyable to forget the stress of life. And then BOOM! There is no escaping the stress! There is no escaping war! It will find you. I don’t want to spoil this for anyone, but encourage you to check it out. It’s very short, even for a short story!

Dickens: A Life

2012-01-17T06:34:00.002-06:00

For my third post for Amanda's Charles Dickens Month celebration I expected to write a glowing review of Claire Tomalin's Dickens: A Life. Sadly this is not meant to be. I've been on the waiting list at the library forever to get this one, and it was the only library book I was going to let myself read as an exception to CB's TBR Double Dare (because it finally came in Dec. 30). Unfortunately, I only read/skimmed about the first 100 pages.

I think part of the problem is that I'm already fairly familiar with Dickens' life, even though I've never read a full biography on him. I studied him pretty in depth in one of my master's level classes, and most of the information in this section wasn't new to me. I would have kept skimming and just reading the new-to-me bits, but I HATED that Tomalin kept throwing in spoilers without warning.

Fortunately, the spoliers I saw were all for books I'd already read (thankfully I'd just finished Oliver Twist!) and for The Old Curiousity Shop, which I hadn't read but that had already been spoiled for me. She just seems to assume anyone reading has already read all of Dickens' works, which was annoying. She should have at least given some sort of warning upfront since presumably many people pick up author biographies when they haven't read an author's complete works.

So, consider this your warning! If you're interested in reading a biography on Dickens, only pick this one up if you're okay with spoilers. (Does anyone else picture River Song every time they use the word "spoilers"?)

Contested Will

2012-01-16T05:47:00.001-06:00

Allie at A Literary Odyssey is hosting a Shakespeare Reading Month this January. I was already reading Contested Will and have a few other Shakespeare-related books on my TBR shelves so I decided to join in.

Contested Will is about the controversy over who actually wrote Shakespeare's plays. During college, I learned a little bit about this issue, that some people believe that a nobody like Shakespeare could possibly have written those works. I wanted to learn more about the topic, but hadn't really read anything about it until recently. I started a different book about the controversy last year, but I was about to head to England and didn't want the thought that someone other than Shakespeare wrote the plays to ruin my excursion to Stratford-Upon-Avon, so quit reading after the first chapter. Ironically, while in Stratford, I picked up Contested Will, which is about the controversy.

Contested Will focuses on the two primary alternatives to Shakespeare: Edward de Vere (the Earl of Oxford) and Francis Bacon. I find Bacon to be an extremely odd choice as the writer of the plays and don't see how people believe this one. The "evidence" relies primarily on codes hidden in the plays and convoluted theories more appropriate for a Dan Brown novel.

The idea that de Vere wrote the plays is much more plausible. His life story matches with some of the happenings in the plays and he was involved at court and had a reason to remain secret. Some big names such as Freud bought into this theory.

My biggest issue is that I don't understand why people think someone other than Shakespeare wrote the plays. No one questioned it during his lifetime. It was common for people to publish works anonymously, so why would someone use Shakespeare as a front instead of just publishing anonymously? That just doesn't make sense. Also, the plays are clearly written with the available actors in mind, which only someone heavily involved in the theatre troupe would know. It seems like snobbery to me, with people not believing a nobody from Stratford could have written so well. But, he would have been taught Latin and had access to the books the plays are primarily drawn from, so why is that hard to believe? Contested Will sets out from the start on the side of Shakespeare, so I am interested to read a work that comes from a different perspective, but I don't see myself changing my mind. I do think this is a good starting point for learning about the controversy.

I thought I'd also share some photos from my trip to Stratford. It's a beautiful little town and looks like the idyllic English village I think most Americans tend to picture England looking like!

Shakespeare and his wife are buried at a pretty little chapel near his home in Stratford:

Shakespeare's childhood home and where he first lived after marrying Anne (with his parents!):

Me in the doorway to his house:

The beautiful street his house is on. I want to live here!

The altar and view about his grave:

Sadly, Shakespeare's later home was mostly destroyed because the tenant got tired of all of the visitors! How horrible is that? They're doing excavation work, but just think of what we might have lost. Also, one cool thing about visiting his childhood home was that Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Mark Twain and many others have visited too, standing in those same rooms and admiring the Bard just like I did. It's a bit of a trip from London, but it was well worth it for me!

A Classics Challenge: E.M. Forster

2012-01-13T05:10:00.018-06:00

November's Autumn is hosting A Classics Challenge and this month's prompt is on authors. As I just finished A Room with A View for this challenge (thoughts coming Monday!) and plan to read Howard's End this year, it was interesting to learn a little more about E.M. Forster.

Level 1

Who is the author? What do they look like? When were they born? Where did they live? What does their handwriting look like? What are some of the other novels they've written? What is an interesting and random fact about their life?

E.M. Forster was Anglo-Irish and Welch but was born in London in 1879. He was a "peripheral" member of the Bloosmbury Group, although he seems to have a quite different writing style, maybe because he would have been a little older than the writers that were part of that group that I'm most familiar with. He volunteered for the Red Cross during WWI, going to Egypt.

Level 2

What do you think of their writing style? What do you like about it? or what would have made you more inclined to like it? Is there are particular quote that has stood out to you?

I found Forster's writing style very accessible and not too stuffy. I liked, but I think I'll save my thoughts on this for my review post on Monday.
Level 3

Why do you think they wrote this novel? How did their contemporaries view both the author and their novel?

Forster wanted to explore class distinctions and how they affect society, and how they were becoming more fluid. Forster wrote during a major time of tranistion, when we were moving from the Victorian to the modern period and I think he needed to write about that change.

As far as reception goes, I thought this bit from Wikipedia was interesting: "In the United States, interest in, and appreciation for, Forster was spurred by Lionel Trilling's E. M. Forster: A Study, which began:
E. M. Forster is for me the only living novelist who can be read again and again and who, after each reading, gives me what few writers can give us after our first days of novel-reading, the sensation of having learned something (Trilling 1943)."

The Bell Jar

2012-01-12T06:15:00.002-06:00

It should perhaps worry me that when I had a bad day a little over a week ago, my response was a craving for a re-read of The Bell Jar. I'll just hope that means I'm wonderfully sane because I wanted to read something about someone having a much worse day than I was to remind myself of how lucky I am!

I liked The Bell Jar when I first read it in high school, but I loved it even more this time. I had forgotten just how beautiful the language is. Plath is wonderful at drawing you into Esther's mind, which is a bit disturbing, but there's something cathartic about it. It's like instead of snapping yourself, you get to experience snapping through the safety of a book and return back to the real world cured.

It surprised me how much I could identify with Esther in the beginning of the novel. I didn't really expect that since what I remembered about her came more from the second half, after she begins going crazy. It's a bit scarier this way, as it makes you feel like we each have this ability to go a bit mad lurking under the surface. I suppose that's why it's such as good book though.

In one scene, Esther pictures a tree with figs, each representing a possible future - wife and mother, editor, Olympian, professor, world traveler. "I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and everyone of them, but choosing meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet." Oh how I have been there. I'm normally a very decisive person, but I went back and forth about my major several times in college and then considering switching careers at various points when I wanted to leave a certain position and couldn't find anything similar. PR, teaching, pursuing my doctorate, marketing, being a librarian, being a freelance writer, packing everything up and running off to Europe and teaching ESL. It's all sounded appealing at some point or the other. I'm happy with the direction I chose, and didn't find myself unable to move forward as Esther does, thankfully. But I definitely understand that feeling of wanting to be able to do everything!

I also think that perhaps my views on childbirth and raising children were greatly influenced by all the reading I did when I was younger. Perhaps reading does corrupt a girl's mind after all. No wonder men used to not want woman to read and learn! :) This book had a rather gross childbirth scene that I'm sure added to my disgust at the whole situation, and Esther has some good quotes about motherhood, although they're quite sad considering Plath was a mother. "So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state." "If I had to wait on a baby all day, I would go mad." Amen sister. I'm glad other people enjoy that and totally get that they're the normal ones, but just the thought of having a child makes me feel slightly crazy, claustrophobic, panicky. I'm so thankful I live in today's society and can be both married and childless by choice.

Re-reading The Bell Jar reminded me of how enjoyable re-reading is. Like many book bloggers, I've tended to re-read less since I started blogging. I had massive reading lists before blogging, but since then my lists have exploded and it's hard to re-read when there are so many books waiting to be read for the first time. I need to make a point to re-read more often!

It's Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty

2012-01-11T06:30:00.002-06:00

I was excited enough to visit Persephone books on my 30th birthday, and I couldn't believe it when I saw a book called It's Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty. I knew I had to have it. I was surprised, because I've read through the Persephone catalogue before, but for some reason this title didn't sound familiar to me. Maybe because I wasn't ready for it yet!

It's been a while since I've read much poetry, so at first I wasn't sure if I would like this collection. But, while still in the store, I opened it to a poem that was so me! I knew I then that I would enjoy the collection, and have read it slowly, just a poem or two a day to savor it. The language and easy to understand poems reminded that poetry can be enjoyable and has inspired me to keep up the habit of reading a poem every day, which is good because I have several poetry books in my TBR stacks! It's also good because I think reading poetry is helping my own writing, making me think more about my language choices as I write.

The poem that drew me in is called "Starting on Monday." It's all about her starting a diet and exercise plan on Monday. "Starting on Monday my will will be stronger than brownies." Brownies are my favorite dessert. The poem goes on about jogging each morning, eating carrots, losing flab, all starting on Monday. "But Tuesday a friend came for coffee and brought homemade muffins." And so on, through the week. There is always an excuse isn't there? I can't really capture it without writing out the whole poem, but I just love her writing. It's so accessible, yet still meaningful, and she still plays with language. Most of the poems are about everyday life: marriage, babies, diets, friends, growing up. Yet she somehow makes beautiful poetry out of it.

The book is really two collections of poems, It's Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty and People and Other Aggravations. How great is that second title? I had to laugh at that. And while the poems are about how other people can indeed be aggravating, at the same time, they're about how we need others and our lives are enriched by them.

I think anyone who enjoys the Persephone books would enjoy this one, and it's worth it even though it's a slim work. I promise you'll keep flipping through it to re-read! I also think it would be a great gift to a mom struggling with meshing her old self to her new mom identity. And it's a great starting place for someone who wants to read more poetry, but is intimidated by it. And, it's written Judith Viorst, who wrote Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. It's got to be awesome, right? I loved picking up a grown-up book by the author of one of my favorite childhood books on my birthday! If you give it a shot, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Oliver Twist

2012-01-10T05:55:00.000-06:00

Woohoo! I finally read Oliver Twist! I think it's odd that I've read so much of Dickens, but never this one. I started it at the beginning of last summer and absolutely could not get in to it, so I quit reading it. I was disappointed, because up until then I'd loved every Dickens' novel I'd read. But it was just so preachy and depressing. I think it was just the wrong time of year or I was in the wrong frame of mind. Stefanie at So Many Books recently posted about if there's a right place to read and the discussion veered toward if there's a right mindset or timeframe to read too. I think Oliver Twist is a winter book, and I simply picked it up at the wrong time.

This time around, I loved it! Yes, it was still a bit preachy, this is Dickens after all, but it didn't bother me. And the characters! Characters are why I love Dickens so much. The first time around, Oliver was just too perfect and honestly a little annoying, but this time I liked him more. The villains are all beautifully written, as is Nancy. I'm glad to finally know who Sikes and Fagin and the Artful Dodger are. You hear their names so often, so it's nice to finally "meet" them.

I felt like this story was more tightly written than other Dickens' works, except for maybe Great Expectations. There seemed to be more of a direction from the beginning, without the sideways rambles that tend to happen in the longer works. That made for a much faster read. Also, Dickens used the phrase "stupid-head" at one point, which was hilarious and awesome.
Spoiler Alert!
Seriously, I wanted to strangle Nancy. I loved the way Dickens wrote her, and it was probably more realistic to give her the ending she got, but I hated that she didn't leave when she had the chance! I have never been able to understand women who stay in abusive relationships. I don't think I ever will. I don't blame the victim, but at the same time, she walked in to her own death. She knew it was dangerous to go back and talked about her death so much she had to suspect it was coming, so she is partially responsible for what happens to her. The other thing that really bugged me was the death of the dog. So unnecessary! Dickens spares him from Sikes, then has him jump to his own death!!! Why??? We got the same point from Nancy's death, we didn't need the poor dog to die so horribly!

End Spoilers!

While Bleak House remains my favorite Dickens' novel so far, I definitely recommend Oliver Twist! This is my second post in celebration of Charles Dickens Month hosted by Amanda at Fig and Thistle. You can read my first post on the Charles Dickens Museum.

The Future of Us

2012-01-04T17:44:00.004-06:00

The Future of Us is an awesome book and a fun-filled trip down memory lane for anyone who grew up in the 90s. I was intrigued by the concept of this young adult book – two high school students in 1996 stumble upon their Facebook pages from 2011. Do they like what they see? How does what they’re doing in 1996 affect their future selves? Plus, it was co-written by Jay Asher, who wrote Thirteen Reasons Why, so I didn’t think it would be just a silly gimmick book.

I’m so glad I gave it a chance, because this book was fun! It’s narrated by both Emma and Josh, and I enjoyed seeing both of their perspectives. Emma isn’t pleased with her future self, so she starts trying to change things. How will that affect Josh though, who is happy with his future life? How can you live in the present when you’re seeing how everything you do affects your future? Both characters are extremely likeable but not without flaws, and I got sucked right into the story. I could totally be Emma. I WAS Emma. Minus the whole seeing my future self on Facebook thing. :) And the running. I hate running. But the boy crazy part, the dating the wrong guy part, the ignoring the nice guy part, the dating guys and casually dumping them because you’re scared of commitment part, yeah, that was me. I’m afraid a lot of people will get annoyed with Emma when they read this, but I totally identified her and unfortunately understood why she was doing what she was doing.

But the best thing about this novel is that it totally transported me straight back to 1996. Oasis. The Dave Matthews Band. Dookie. Ellen was in the closet. There was no gay marriage – anywhere. Discman. VCRs. Seinfeld. Not being able to watch something else while recording something. This book is loaded with mid-90s references. It made me so nostalgic! (Although very happy about the invention of DVRs.)

And of course, the whole premise is nostalgic. Emma finds Facebook the first time she loads up her new AOL CD-ROM – which takes 97 minutes to download – and it’s magically already on her favorites. The description of that first time getting online was spot on. It was so crazy! Now we can watch movies instantly online on our TV or our phones! It’s insane how much the world has changed just during my lifetime. I can’t imagine where we’ll be in another 30 years.

After finishing the novel, I couldn’t help wondering what my 15-year-old self would make of my Facebook page. What would she think about my life? Would she be happy about it or want to change it?

I think she’d be happy I’m married to an attractive guy I met in college, although she’d be confused as to why we have a picture of us in Pittsburgh as our profile photos. She’d be glad I’m working in PR, which is kind of funny since I’ve gone back and forth over that so many times but I think in ninth grade was when I first learned about PR and thought it would be a fun career. She’d be glad I work at a company on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work for list, but would probably disappointed I don’t work at any agency. (Which is also funny, since I did work at an agency and wasn’t a fan.) She might be surprised I didn’t go to OU or out of state for college but would be happy about OBU.

She’d be glad that I’m still friends with a bunch of my friends from then, although I’d be sad to see Suzanne, Hunter, and Amber ALL live out of state! (Which does in fact suck.) I’d be confused that I don’t know most of the people in my photos and commenting on my posts, but would hopefully be happy because that means I’ve made lots of new friends over the years while keeping the old ones.

Young me would be horrified at all the baby pictures. Just like old me. :) And she’d be down right shocked over some of the people who married each other! Micah and Amber? Amanda and Ashley? Breanne and Jason? My brain would have exploded, which is funny, since most of those couples have been together a loooooong time now. And they all have kids. She would be very, very happy that I don’t have kids, although probably surprised. At that age I assumed my maternal instinct would kick in at some point and I’d change my mind. Clearly not!

She’d be thrilled I spent my 30th birthday in London! She might be surprised that I didn’t also throw a massive party because I loved throwing parties back then. There are certain people she’d be surprised at how much weight they’ve lost or gained over the years, or how they look exactly the same or completely different. She’d probably be surprised to see recent photos of me at Bridget’s house, since I tried hard to hate her in ninth grade because she was gorgeous and all the guys I liked liked her! :) But she’s just too dang nice not to like! Funnily enough, I’m Facebook friends with the two guys who came to mind (and did ‘date’ that year, I guess I wasn’t too concerned about coming in second!) and they’re both married, which I’m sure would have disappointed me then even though I certainly didn’t expect to marry either one of them!

It was a fun little exercise. It made me very appreciative of my life. If you had asked me before I thought about it, I would have said my 15-year-old self would probably be appalled at my life, but in thinking about it more I’m exactly where I thought I would be.

Charles Dickens Museum

2012-01-03T05:45:00.001-06:00

Amanda at Fig and Thistle is hosting a Charles Dickens Month leading up to the 200th anniversary of his birth in February. Each Tuesday participants will post something about Dickens, and we’ll celebrate together!

That’s me making my sad face at the Charles Dickens Museum in London. I had planned to kick off my 30th birthday with a visit, but alas, when we go there, it was closed for renovation. I had checked their website during my planning, but they didn’t have anything about the renovation on there at that time, and sadly, it wasn’t scheduled to reopen until the day after we’d be back in Oklahoma. Sigh.

I’m afraid Ryan thought I was about to throw a temper tantrum like a 2-year-old, but I managed to hold it together. At least I got to see the outside of the house and walked up and down the street he lived on. It’s crazy to me that normal people live next door. How cool is that? I’d love to live next door to where Dickens lived! Can you imagine reading A Christmas Carol, curled up by the fire and knowing the man who wrote it lives next door? That’s crazy!

And it was really a beautiful street. It’s very traditional London, or how I pictured residential London anyway. Gorgeous row houses, trees, in a quiet part of town, bookstores and cute restaurants nearby. This is where I would want to live if I moved to London.

Plus, it’s close to Persephone Books! That was the next stop on my birthday, and not being able to spend hours in the museum did give me more time there and at the string of bookshops we went in on Charing Cross road that day. Everyone who has seen my London photos have been a little confused by the ecstatic photo of me in Persephone Books, so I thought it would be nice to share with my fellow bloggers since most of the book blogging world is slightly obsessed. And, one of the books I got was in fact by a Dickens – I got The Winds of Heaven by Monica Dickens, Dickens’ great-granddaughter. It has a quite lovely bookmark and endpapers.

The store was quaint and cozy and overflowing with the beautiful grey books. I had such as hard time making my selections, but fortunately Ryan is a good sport. And he carried the books while we continue our shopping at Foyle’s later. He’s a keeper. And we’ll make it back to the Charles Dickens Museum someday!

2012 Goals

2012-01-01T15:24:00.000-06:00

I wasn’t going to post any sort of goals post, but Allie inspired me to! I enjoyed reading her post, so what the hey, right?

Reading/blogging:

• Continue reading an average of two books a week (104 for the year)

• Read all the books on my TBR pile reading plan for the year (about half of my total books for the year)

• Succeed in the challenges I’ve signed up for

• Make a massive dent in my TBR shelves!

• Blog at least three times a week

• Include more posts that are more personal, not just reviews

• Do not buy any books except as allowed as an incentive for clearing off the TBR shelves (3 Persephones or 3-5 Morland Dynasty books since these are available through my library system for every 50 books I read from my TBR piles) and any book gift cards I get.

Personal:

• Lose 15-20 more pounds! With muscle gain, I’m not sure on the exact weight goal because I will hopefully gain some muscle, but somewhere in that range should be good.

• Enjoy the present. I spend WAY too much time focusing on the future. I’ll still do that, but I need to enjoy life as I’m living it!

• Stop complaining. My life is actually pretty awesome and I need to learn to remember that!

• Continue reducing the amount of processed food I eat.

• Continue growing emergency fund and paying off debt.

• Help keep Ryan on track with school! My husband’s going back to school to be a history teacher.

• Finish writing my current novel, edit it, and submit it to agents!

• Do more volunteer work.

• Practice some of the ideas of minimalism – buy less crap and get rid of more of the crap I already own. Simplify.

• Have a media fast once a month – no TV or internet – including on my iPhone! Read and write and spend time with Ryan and friends instead.

Happy New Year everyone! What are your goals for the year?

End of Year Survey

2011-12-31T12:32:00.001-06:00

Jamie at the Perpetual Page-Turner is hosting her End of Year Book Survey and it seems like a good way to end the year. I’ll be in Dallas over the weekend watching the Boston Bruins play the Dallas Stars. We usually try to see the Penguins play, but couldn’t make it to any of their games this year so seeing Tim Thomas (hopefully!) play will have to do. I do have players on both teams on my Fantasy Hockey team so it will be fun to root for them in person.

1. Best Book You Read In 2011?

Atlas Shrugged. It was a struggle at first, but I ended up loving it.

2. Most Disappointing Book/Book You Wish You Loved More Than You Did?

I started Howl’s Moving Castle, which I think is part of a series, but I thought it was awful and didn’t finish it. I was disappointed because I’d heard so many wonderful things from bloggers I like. I just thought the writing was terrible and it was so boring – I didn’t care what happened to anyone! I also started The Magicians and was equally disappointed and didn’t finish it. Again, I thought the writing was crap and the characters and story boring. I do not understand how this is so popular!

3. Most surprising (in a good way!) book of 2011?

Atlas Shrugged

4. Book you recommended to people most in 2011?

Hmmm….I think I recommended The Night Circus to a few people, and I told my husband he should read Atlas Shrugged and the Hunger Games.

5. Best series you discovered in 2011?
I don’t think I read any new series this year, except the unfinished ones I mention in the second question.

6. Favorite new authors you discovered in 2011?

Ayn Rand, Jamie Ford, Oliver Goldsmith

7. Best book that was out of your comfort zone or was a new genre for you?

This is coming up a lot, but probably Atlas Shrugged. I like classics, but I don’t usually like twentieth-century works as much and I knew there would be so much philosophy in this I didn’t think I would like it.

8. Most thrilling, unputdownable book in 2011?

Well, I read Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier in one sitting, so technically I guess that was it! As for thrilling though, I would say Before I Got to Sleep since it was so creepy and more of an actual thriller.

9. Book you most anticipated in 2011?

Probably The Night Circus

10. Favorite cover of a book you read in 2011?

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

11. Most memorable character in 2011?

Definitely John Galt from Atlas Shrugged.

12. Most beautifully written book read in 2011?

Even though it is non-fiction, I loved the language in Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. Which is good, since it’s a book on writing!

13. Book that had the greatest impact on you in 2011?

Atlas Shrugged. It made me think about my economic beliefs and fine tune some of them.

14. Book you can’t believe you waited UNTIL 2011 to finally read?

Hmm. Probably Atlas Shrugged. I think I would have loved it in college, when I was more involved in politics and would have had more people to talk about the ideas with.

15. Favorite Passage/Quote From A Book You Read In 2011?

I only recently started trying to make notes of passages and quotes, but here’s one I liked: “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
16. Book That You Read In 2011 That Would Be Most Likely To Reread In 2012?

I don’t usually read books two years in a row, so I don’t plan on rereading any of the ones I read in 2011 in 2012. I might be tempted by Atlas Shrugged because I feel like I just skimmed the surface of that one, but I know that won’t happen. I do plan on rereading Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and/or something by Jane Austen because it’s been a little while since I’ve read those and they’re some of my favorites.

17. Book That Had A Scene In It That Had You Reeling And Dying To Talk To Somebody About It? (a WTF moment, an epic revelation, a steamy kiss, etc. etc.) Be careful of spoilers!

This wasn’t really a shocking scene or plot twist, but I would have to say John Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged. I couldn’t wait to talk to my husband about it and work through my thoughts and reactions. That made that whole book worth it.
Looking Ahead...

1. One Book You Didn’t Get To In 2011 But Will Be Your Number 1 Priority in 2012?

I had hoped to read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte this year but didn’t get to it. I plan to read it in 2012 so I’ll have finally read something by Anne!

2. Book You Are Most Anticipating For 2012?

Probably War and Peace. I realized the version I read was actually abridged so I haven’t actually read the whole thing and want to remedy that. Plus, I have a much better translation now.

3. One Thing You Hope To Accomplish Or Do In Your Reading/Blogging In 2012?

I hope to read at least 50 books from my TBR shelves. I own an insane amount of books and there is no reason to have so many that I haven’t even read!!! As far as blogging goes, I just want to stick with it because it does add depth to my reading experience and I enjoy the interaction with other book bloggers.

TBR Challenge

2011-12-30T17:42:00.001-06:00

One last challenge to join! I decided to go for Adam at Roof Beam Reader’s TBR Challenge. I’m already doing C.B’s TBR challenge of reading only books I own until April, but this challenge is to read 12 books in 2012 that have been on my TBR shelves for longer than a year. Sadly, this is a ton of books! I could take the easy way out and use books I’m already planning to read for other challenges, but where would the fun be in that?  Since many of the other challenges I’m participating in involve classics, I’m going to make this one more fun and focus on lighter reading. I’m also going to try to pick books that have been on shelves for many years rather than ones I just bought a little over a year ago.

Here’s my list:

1. Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

2. Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah

3. The Queen of the Big Time by Adriana Trigiani

4. Fortune’s Rocks by Anita Shreve

5. Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz

6. The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton

7. Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

8. The All True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton by Jane Smiley

9. A Girl from the South by Joanna Trollope

10. Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice

11. Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio

12. Gatsby’s Girl by Caroline Preston

Alternates:

• The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl

• A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Falling Angels

2011-12-29T18:06:00.001-06:00

For some reason, several years ago I felt compelled to pick up several Tracy Chevalier novels at a library book sale, even though at that time I hadn’t read anything by her. Fortunately, I’ve enjoyed The Lady and the Unicorn and the movie version of The Girl with the Pearl Earring (which I watched before realizing it was based on a book). I decided to give Falling Angels a try and ended up reading it in one sitting.

Unlike the other Chevalier novels I’m familiar with, this one doesn’t focus on the story behind a piece of artwork. It takes place at the turn of the century in England. It’s about a world poised on the brink of major changes – the death of Queen Victoria, the invention of cars, wider use of electricity, women’s suffrage, breaking away from old traditions. While we today are thankful for this changes and it would have been exciting to be part of that, Chevalier shows that it would also be a time of upheaval and struggle.

If you’re a progressive woman in the early 1900s, sympathetic to the women’s rights movement, you would likely feel out of place in your home. You’d be torn between family duties and being a suffragette. Your husband likely wouldn’t want you involved, and even your daughter who you’re in part doing this for won’t understand when she’s young. You may be arrested and put in jail. You may ruin the family name simply by protesting. Chevalier shows this struggle, and also shows that sometimes even when we’re fighting for what’s right we can go too far.

There were several references to Dickens in the novel, and I couldn’t help comparing Kitty, who becomes a suffragette, to Mrs. Jellyby in Bleak House. Both have good intentions, but take their focus on volunteering to such an extreme that it hurts their families. Mrs. Jellyby is so consumed with helping children in Africa that she fails to see the state her own children are in. Kitty becomes so focused on supporting women’s suffrage that she neglects her own daughter, even though she claims she’s doing these things to help her daughter, and ends up causing tremendous harm to her family and a neighboring family.

I think perhaps one of the reasons I was enchanted by this story is that when I was little I had the Samantha doll and books from American Girls, who was from the turn-of-the-century. Although Samantha was from New York, the overall setting was very similar and she even attends a women’s suffrage event in a park in one book. Reading Falling Angels felt like reading a grown-up version of the Samantha books, where the rose-colored glasses are removed and there are deaths, violence, lies, scandals, and affairs.

Also, I tend to enjoy novels that are written from various points of view, and Chevalier does that well. The voices are distinct, so you don’t have to keep reminding yourself whose section you’re reading. I love getting to see multiple sides of the same story and learning from the various perceptions. You can see how people think they’re fooling others but aren’t, or sometimes are, and how two different people view the same conversation or event. I think it adds depth to a story.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and appreciated its ability to pull me completely into the story. The one negative is that the first page makes it sound like it’s going to be about a group of swingers, which it’s not at all. Don’t let that throw you off. I think that was an odd decision to make in an otherwise wonderful read.

Why We Read

2011-12-28T17:59:00.001-06:00

I’ve read several works lately that focus on why and how we read. The first year Ryan and I were married, I dragged him to a library book sale and he got sucked into the silent auction. We ended up coming up with a complete set of the Great Books of the Western World and the Gateways to the Great Books (meant to help you get started with short stories or shorter works by some of the authors in the Great Books set). Those were “his” books, while I bought bags full of “my” books. I’m a lucky girl.  Sadly, these great books have mostly sat unread on our shelves just looking pretty. I’ve read some of the novels in other forms – these are hard backs with tiny print – and some of the ancient Greek works. As these sets make up a good chunk of my TBR stacks, I started with the introduction to both sets.

The intro to the Great Books set is called The Great Conversation. I thought this was fitting, because while reading it I also read Reading for Pleasure in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs, which actually references the editor, Mortimer Adler, of the Great Books/The Great Conversation multiple times and basically argues with him. This made for an interesting reading experience! I really felt like I was having a conversation – I’d read some of Adler’s points and then read some of Jacob’s points and go back to Adler while agreeing with and arguing with both of them.

So, what were their points? Adler argues that everyone should read the Great Books. These are a foundation for all learning and understanding and after reading them you will be better equipped to read anything. He rants about the education system and how it’s not focused on reading whole works and we’re too distracted by TV to read anything anymore – and he’s writing in the early 60s! I hate to think what he’d be thinking now.

Jacobs, on the other hand, thinks people should read on a whim and for pleasure, not because someone told them that this or that book is one they should read. He dislikes lists like the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die and anything that tries to say there are certain books you should read. He also doesn’t really think you can teach someone to love reading, which he admits is an odd stance for an English literature professor.

For me, there are pieces of both philosophies that I agree with. I agree with Jacobs in that I think by pushing students to believe that only reading certain works really counts and focusing on works that usually aren’t the best classics out there, we make reading feel like a chore. It’s something to do so you can be smart or well read or because you’re supposed to, not because it’s simply fun.

However, like Adler, I do think we should teach everyone to appreciate the classics. That doesn’t mean everyone will end up a life-long classics reader, but they should be exposed to Shakespeare and the ancient Greeks and many others. I disagree with him that everyone should read everything in the Great Books –even I’m not looking forward to trying several authors, such as Euclid and some of the other math and science focused authors. I think if we tried to force everyone to read those in school we’d have even more people who never read again.

I do think there are ways to use the classics to show students you can read for pleasure. I think teachers should choose books that have interesting stories instead of just works that are the ones that tend to get taught. For example, Hamlet gets taught a lot in high school, but it’s not the Shakespeare play that I think would appeal most to high school students. Why not try Othello instead? Teenagers are living with revenge and manipulation and love triangles every day – they can relate. Relating to Hamlet whining about his dead father and his uncle shacking up with his mom and possibly having killed his father? Not so much. Don’t get me wrong – I love Hamlet. However, when I read it the first time in high school even I – who enjoyed classics even then – was irritated by Hamlet and didn’t enjoy it.

I enjoyed this passage of Adler’s: “The reiteration of slogans, the distortion of the news, the great storm of propaganda that beats upon the citizen twenty-four hours a day all his life long mean either that democracy must fall prey to the loudest and most persistent propagandist or that the people must save themselves by strengthening their minds so that they can appraise the issues for themselves.”

How many problems would the world be able to solve if people read the classics to strengthen their minds, improve their logic and really learn how to think? Then again, how many people who have read the classics fall on both sides of the political aisle? And I can’t help but think about my husband, who doesn’t read that often (despite buying the Great Books set), but is the smarter person I know. Although, he did read Homer and Virgil when he was in junior high so he did still have that foundation, so Adler and Jacobs could both use him to argue their points, I think.

While Jacobs argues that reading should first and foremost be for pleasure, at the same time, he turns right around and makes some of the same arguments Adler does. He talks of the importance of the liberal arts education and teaching students how to think so that they can continue to learn throughout life. He complains that schools are set up with the assumption that students will not continue to learn once they graduate. He also talks about reading slower and more reflectively rather than rushing forward to read the next book on the list, which is actually something I think Adler would agree with.

Adler mentions that he thinks schools focus too much on socialization and the inefficiencies in the system keep kids in school longer than they should. He believes we could easily trim 2-4 years off the current system by removing busy work and not teaching to the lowest denominator, allowing students to start and finish college much earlier. I remember being so bored through most of my schooling, and definitely agree that it could have been condensed. I think this would encourage more people to go to college too, because you could take longer to finish college if you’re working and paying your own way and still be very young when you finish, or you could move through college and advanced degrees and become a doctor or Ph.D while still in your early 20s.

I seem to fall somewhere in the middle of Jacobs and Adler – I enjoy using lists such as the Great Books to guide my reading and discover new works, but they don’t rule my reading. Much of my reading is done on a whim and is purely for entertainment. I think you need a bit of both in life.

I think there’s enough in these works for several blog posts, and I may end up continuing to write about these books, but for now I’ll close with this quote Jacobs used from a graduation speech David Foster Wallace gave: “Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.”

How/why do you read? Do you follow lists, read on a whim, or both?

Top 10 Tuesdays - Top Books of 2011

2011-12-27T17:43:00.001-06:00

I decided to join in on Top 10 Tuesdays hosted by The Broke and Bookish. This week’s list is the top 10 books you enjoyed in 2011. Since I haven’t blogged for most of the year, I had trouble remembering if I’d read certain books this year or late last year and think I’ve forgotten a few library books I really enjoyed, but if I can’t remember them for sure I suppose they wouldn’t make it on to my top 10 list anyway, right? My list is heavy on English literature and history because I read a lot in anticipation of visiting London.
In no particular order:

1. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand – I was shocked when I finished this and it ended up being my favorite book of the year. I was so miserable reading it at first, but fell in love with John Galt, and Dagny carried me through the 1,000+ pages of deep philosophy.

2. The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford – Another surprise. I thought this would be fine enough, but I didn’t have high expectations. I ended up loving it and how it made me think about how we view and treat others.

3. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern – This one is ended up on a lot of both top 10 lists and overrated lists. The magic of the story made me overlook the flaws in character development and pacing and made me long to visit the Night Circus. I think this would make a great movie and theme park idea.

4. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgen Burnett – I don’t normally include rereads on lists like this, but I reread this one while flying to London for the first time and loved being able to relive the story that sparked my love affair with all things British while anticipating landing in London.

5. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe – Yet another surprise! I was afraid this would be a bit boring. How interesting can being stuck on island alone really be? Apparently very interesting! This was a fast-paced action story and I think it should be used more in junior highs to get kids interested in reading the classics.

6. The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe – I’m seeing a trend here. I think books that end up being my favorites tend to be the ones that surprise me. I read this one primarily because Austen pokes fun at it in Northanger Abbey and yet seemed to enjoy it herself. It’s so long that I thought the melodrama would be too much for me over so many pages, but it ended up being a fun, easy read.

7. The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith – One final surprise. I’m not sure why I was surprised by this one because I love 18th-century British literature, but for some reason I just thought this one would be okay. It was hilarious! It’s easy to see why it was one of the most popular novels of the time and is mentioned in many other works. There is a TON of action packed in to a slim novel, making it a quick read, unlike many doorstopper classics.

I made myself select a few non-fiction books to finish off the list:

8. The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich – This is a great introduction to art. It starts at the very beginning of known artwork in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome and moves through to modern times (around the 1960s). It’s very readable and accessible and doesn’t feel too textbooky, even though it is commonly used as a textbook. There are hundreds of beautiful photos of the artwork, with cross references throughout the text so you can see how pieces were influenced by earlier styles. I enjoyed art before and had taken a humanities class in college that had some of the basics, but this gave me a firmer foundation and exposed me to some new pieces. I think it helped me during my trip to London get even more out of the various museums we visited and all of the amazing architecture all around.

9. Imagined London by Anna Quindlen – This was another book I read in preparation for going to London. Quindlen is one of my favorite authors and I enjoyed reading her experience visiting London’s literary places. I had many of the same feelings – what if I’ve built this up so much I can’t help but be disappointed? And, I had to remind myself many times that I would be visiting London in 2011, not in the 1850s. Fortunately, I loved the trip and can’t wait to go back someday!

10. A Brief History of British Kings and Queens by Mike Ashley – No trip to London would be complete without background information on all the kings and queens! This book gives an overview of all of the kings and queens of Britain in an entertaining way. It would be easy for a book like this to be very dry, but Ashley includes interesting tidbits and writes in normal English rather than scholarly or textbook language.

What were your favorite books of 2011? Link to your lists if you made one!

The Gift of Christmas

2011-12-21T19:58:00.000-06:00

During college, my university hosted a Red Dirt Book Festival featuring Oklahoma authors. While most of the students headed home for fall break, I stuck around to attend the festival, attend writing workshops and meet real authors. I learned a lot during those sessions, which were the first professional writing seminars I’d attended. However, I let myself get sucked in to a few book purchases I probably wouldn’t have made if I wasn’t talking directly to the authors during the trade show.

So. Two of those books have languished on my shelves since then. I’m pretty sure the conference was in 2002. That means they’ve been hanging around for nearly 10 years! Oops. Since one of them was a Christmas book, I figured now was a good time to give it a shot.

When I went to dig it up, I remembered why I was reluctant to read it. The author was very friendly and helpful or I would have never have bought this! It’s called The Gift of Christmas, is self-published and has a cat on the front. A cat. Don’t get me wrong – I love cats. In real life. Not so much in books. Animals on the covers of books are never a good sign. They usually die, although this being a Christmas book, I was assuming it would just be sappy instead.

While it was definitely sappy, I was pleasantly surprised that it was actually well written. Self-publishing may have become more acceptable in recent years, but it still seems like most self-published books were rejected by publishers for a reason. And, usually, these books are in desperate need of an editor. This novel was short, just around 100 pages with not a lot of copy on each page. That may have been why it wasn’t published traditionally – it’s too short to really sell well. Today, it might work well as an ebook.

The story was a bit cheesy, but it was just a nice little Christmas story. Since I’ve been a bit humbug about Christmas in recent years, irritated over the consumerism that has sucked the life and meaning out of the holiday, it was a nice reminder about the importance of spending time with your family while you can.

The main character stopped celebrating Christmas five years ago, when his brother died. His brother loved Christmas and had led the activities leading up to the big day, and he just couldn’t face the holiday without him. Through a serious of mysterious gifts related to his brother, the narrator remembers the importance of Christmas and reconnects with his remaining family members. It’s a simple story, but it was a nice reminder to cherish the time you have with loved ones and that a good way to honor them is to do things that they enjoyed in remembrance of them.

The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

2011-12-21T17:54:00.001-06:00

This is one of those books that got some buzz when it came out and ended up on those “Buy 2 Get 1 Free” shelves at Barnes and Noble that I used to find so hard to resist. After buying it, I was afraid it would actually be a little boring or overly sweet and languished on my shelf. I’ve been enjoying World War II novels lately, so I decided to give it a shot.

Imagine my surprise when I found myself loving this book! The story zipped along but still focused primarily on characters, characters who develop and change through the course of the novel. The narrative goes back and forth in time, something I love when done correctly. The “current” part of the book takes place in 1986, with flash backs to the early 40s during the war.

While I knew the book had something to do with the Japanese during the war, I was surprised that the book’s protagonist is a Chinese American. This brought a fresh perspective to the war to me. Even before the war, Henry was torn between being an American and carrying forward the Chinese traditions of his father. By earning a scholarship to a white school, he was taunted for being too white by the Chinese kids and for being Chinese by the white kids. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, things got even worse because people would lump him in with the Japanese. To protect him, especially once the internments started, Henry’s father makes him wear a badge that says “I am Chinese.” Henry’s best friend is a Japanese girl, a girl who doesn’t speak any Japanese and is a second-generation American, yet she is treated like a foreigner in her own country.

The relationship that forms between Henry and Keiko is beautiful and heartbreaking, as is Henry’s relationship with his son in the present day. The characters really came alive in the novel, including the secondary characters. Even the chief bully has layers. I loved the characters of Sheldon, a black man making jazz music on the streets who befriends Henry, and Mrs. Beatty, the cafeteria lady who is more than she seems.

While the novel is worth reading for the characters alone, it also makes you think. We tend to gloss over the Japanese internment camps in our history. The ones that were used in this book were real places; real people were sent there. American citizens were sent there. I think we tend to think it was people “fresh off the boat” who were sent away (not that that’s better), but families who had never even been to Japan or spoke Japanese and were far more American than Japanese were also imprisoned. Their land was sold out from under them, their possessions looted. When they left the camps, many had nothing left to return to.

An added layer to this story is that it’s told by a Chinese American whose father hates the Japanese. China and Japan were enemies fighting their own war as well. He didn’t just want Henry to avoid spending time with Keiko or other Japanese people because of WWII, but because of his own hatred toward the Japanese. We see how different Keiko’s family is, how they think of themselves as American first, with a Japanese heritage. When Keiko talked about the war, I was reminded of a quote a friend with Japanese-American and American parents wrote on Facebook about Pearl Harbor: “I’m sorry my people bombed my people.” That was what Keiko seemed to feel, and she identified more with those being bombed than with those doing the bombing, yet she was punished for being of Japanese descent.

The story made me think about how we label people. Many non-Asians lump all Asians together and don’t really make distinctions even though within Asia there are many distinct groups. With blacks, we lump them together as African-Americans, even though most of them have been here for centuries. Aren’t they just American? Whites aren’t identified by their family’s nationality/continent. When you think about it, African-American is an odd term anyway because there are many places in Africa with more people of Middle Eastern descent than are black, and then you have people who are really African-Americans like Charlize Theron because she’s from South Africa, but we’d never describe her that way. I wouldn’t want to be called European-American or British-American. I’m just plain old American, although I love my British and European heritage. I think in trying to respectfully label people we’ve actually caused more confusion and are inadvertently disrespecting people by slapping a qualifying label on them that seems to say they’re not as American as someone else is. And perhaps we worry too much about labels period, because when it comes down to it we’re all just people anyway.

Bird by Bird - Writing Advice

2011-12-18T16:52:00.000-06:00

I recently went to a Ragan Communications/Great Place to Work conference and attended a story telling workshop while I was there. Although the conference was work focused, the speaker in this workshop had experience both in internal communications at Microsoft and as a young adult novelist, and her session focused on writing in general. It was nice to get to attend something that gave me great advice for work writing but also for novel writing, since I'm trying to finally finish writing a full novel. During her session, she mentioned a few writing books that she recommends, and one of those was Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.

I honestly think Bird by Bird is the best book on writing I've read. Too many writing books are sadly dull and boring, not exactly great selling points for the advice they're trying to give. Many of the writing books I've read tend to give an example of what another writer wrote and then they analyze it. While that can be helpful, it usually comes across as very technical and doesn't make for good writing in and of itself.

What Lamott does differently is tell stories. She sprinkles stories of her own writing experience and gives his examples of what she means through these stories. Her stories are all interesting and memorable, making them much more effective for sharing her writing advice. A lot of her advice is the same thing every writing book focuses on - write every day, just get a first draft down and then revise like crazy, have someone review your work, etc. What makes her different is that she's effective at convincing you that you do need to actually do these things. You are not the exception; you are not special. Sorry. She also provides a lot of advice about more technical aspects, such as character development and plot structure, but she shares examples of writing prompts she gives her classes and uses those to show you how to do this instead of just telling you, following the most important writing rule of all - show, don't tell.

Lamott also offers realistic advice on publishing. She talks about how in every workshop or class she teaches, everyone just wants to know about being published and thinks they will become rich and happy once they are published. She quickly dispels these beliefs. She emphasizes that you should focus on writing, not on being published, as that will make your writing better. Then, you really must get an agent. Finally, if you finally do get published, it might be for a a hill of a beans, you may have to deal with bad reviews, bad reviews in your local paper that everyone you know reads, or worse, no reviews or attention at all.

I'm not usually a big quote person, but there were many great quotes in this book. One that I particularly enjoyed was "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do," Anne's prist friend Tom.

"Nothing is important as a likeable narrator. Nothing holds a story together better," Ethan Canin. I liked this one, partly because whether or not characters need to be likeable tends to get discussed quite a bit by book bloggers. I like this answer. Lamott explains that you don't have to want to hang out with them, but they do have to be likeable in some way.

"Characters should not, conversely, serve as pawns for some plot you've dreamed up. Any plot you impose on your characters will be onomatopoetic: PLOT." I think this is why I prefer literary fiction to genre fiction most of the time. I don't usually like it when characters exist only to carry the plot forward

"Faulkner's books work because they focus on character - they are compelling." Again, she really drives home the importance of character, and has some writing exercises to help you learn more about your characters and further develop them.

If you're looking for ways to improve your writing, I definitely recommend this one. I'm now interested in reading some of her novels, although since I don't own any of them I guess I'll be waiting until April for that, once the TBR Double Dare is finished. I'd be interested in learning the best writing advice others have ever received if anyone wants to share!

Little Dorrit

2011-12-16T19:09:00.002-06:00

I’m afraid Bleak House may have ruined the rest of Dickens’ works for me. I adored Bleak House, and it quickly rose to take a place in my top 10 all time favorite books. (Don’t ask me to actually name the 10, but I’m sure it would make it!) While I’ve enjoyed all of Dickens’ other works, I’ve noticed that since reading BH, I seem to struggle more with any new ones.

I’ve read and loved Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol and David Copperfield. I enjoyed Nicholas Nickleby and the other Christmas stories that are often packaged with A Christmas Carol. But, since reading Bleak House, I’ve started and stopped both Oliver Twist and A Tale of Two Cities. Oliver Twist felt too much like getting a beat over the head about poverty (all of his books have this aspect, but in this one I just wasn’t able to get past this and into the story). A Tale of Two Cities was like reading something by an entirely different author. This should show how skilled he was at writing, but it was just weird for me and wasn’t what I was expecting. I think after adjusting my expectations I should be able to go back and finish both, which is good because I plan to do so in the coming year!

With Little Dorrit, although I did finish it, nothing in the story really grabbed me. The characters didn’t seem to pop off the pages like Dickensian characters usually do. Little Dorrit should inspire more empathy than she did. Yes, I felt sorry for her and wanted her life to be better, but she was just so good it wasn’t believable or interesting. I suppose I like my characters with a bit more fire in them. And the way she worshiped her father just bugged me; he was a likeable guy despite his shortcomings but her attachment to him was borderline creepy.

Dickens isn’t known for creating well-developed female characters, which may be part of the problem with this work. It’s centered around a female, and she’s not nearly as interesting as Esther in BH and can’t carry the work alone. Also, Esther had a cast of amazing surrounding characters, people I can call to memory so clearly that it’s as if I’ve met them in person. I just finished Little Dorrit and struggled to remember some of even the major characters’ names. Most of the side stories were uninteresting and just seemed like filler, a way to get more issues published when this was published in serial form. I was glad the copy I read had a character list at the beginning because I had to keep referring to it because all the characters were so bland. BH is a sprawling novel with a large cast of characters and I never had to do that!

Perhaps it’s not fair to compare Bleak House and Little Dorrit, but Bleak House did appear first. I imagine readers in Victorian England did the same thing. Perhaps part of the problem was that although this is one of his later works, it’s like Dickens went back to his earlier writing style and was just using his characters to prop up a theme dealing with debtors’ prisons. I’m not sure if Dickens even cared for his characters, he just wanted people to see how bad the debtors’ prisons were and do something about them. While I agree with him, and I also don’t always have to care about the characters to enjoy a work, the combination of lack of character development and preaching in such a long work just makes for a less than stellar read.

If you intend to read all of Dickens works, I might recommend saving Bleak House for the end. I think I would enjoy his other works more if I wasn’t comparing them to BH. If you’re just looking to read a Dickens novel or two, then I’d recommend going with Bleak House and either Great Expectations or David Copperfield. Although you should also read A Christmas Carol at least once. It’s short! I’ll be giving Oliver Twist another shot in February in honor of the 200th anniversary of Dickens’ birth, so hopefully that will go better this time!

Challenges

2011-12-15T19:14:00.003-06:00

One of the best things about book blogging again is participating in reading challenges! Here are a few I'm looking forward to. It worries me that I made lists for all of these without duplicates just from items in my TBR stacks...I clearly have a problem! I highly doubt I will finish all of these, but hopefully this will help me make a dent in my stacks!

Well, since I started blogging again in an attempt to clear of my TBR shelves, it's only fitting that I give Ready When You Are, C.B.'s TBR Double Dare a try. The goal is to read only books from your TBR stacks from Jan. 1 through April 1. I think it's fitting that this ends on April Fool's Day! I don't know if I can resist the library that long. He does offer exceptions for library books you already have checked out before Jan. 1 or have a hold for that haven't come in yet. I will not add books to my hold list like a madwoman. I will not! Hopefully.

Allie at A Literary Odyssey is hosting a Shakespeare Reading Month in January. I finally finished all of Shakespeare's plays last summer in anticipation of my trip to Stratford-Upon-Avon and London. I'd read all the sonnets in college, so I just have his longer poems left and I can then say I've read the complete works of Shakespeare! Very excited about that one.

November's Autumn is hosting A Classics Challenge where you read seven classics and then respond to a prompt on the fourth of each month you're participating in. I'm actually going to try to participate each month because I anticipate I'll be reading a lot of classics because I own a ton of them!

A Room with a View
Something by Dickens
The Red Badge of Courage
Howard's End
Something by Henry James
Something by Robert Louis Stevenson
Far from the Madding Crowd

Jean at Howling Frog is hosting a Greek Classics Challenge. I'm hoping this one will help me get to some of the many ancient works on my TBR list! I've read most of the Greek plays I own, so I mainly have philosophy and history works to read, which can be a little intimidating in large doses.

Something by Aristophanes
Something else by Aristophanes
Something by Euripides
Something else by Euripides :)
The History by Herodotus
The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
The Republic by Plato
Something by Aristotle
Works by Hippocrates
Elements by Euclid
Works of Archimedes
The Amalgest by Ptolemy

Sarah Reads Too Much is hosting a Back to the Classics Challenge. I'm going to try to not double up between this and the A Classics Challenge or the Chunkster Challenge. It's a good thing I like classics since I've bought so many of them!

Any 19th Century Classic - Something by George Eliot
Any 20th Century Classic - The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Reread a classic of your choice - This one will be a surprise treat in the midst of all the craziness! Maybe The Great Gatsby since I'd like to reread it before the movie comes out.
A Classic Play - Something by Aristophanes or Euripides
Classic Mystery/Horror/Crime Fiction - The Complete Sherlock Holmes Volume I
Classic Romance - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Read a Classic that has been translated from its original language to your language - To clarify, if your native language is NOT English, you may read any classic originally written in English that has been translated into your native language. - The Stranger by Camus
Classic Award Winner - To clarify, the book should be a classic which has won any established literary award. - The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway
Read a Classic set in a Country that you (realistically speaking) will not visit during your lifetime - To Clarify, this does not have to be a country that you hope to visit either. Countries that no longer exist or have never existed count. - Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad - it's mostly in the Indian Ocean and on a fictional island based on Sumatra. Probably not traveling there!

Wendy and Vasily are hosting the Chunkster Challenge again and I'm definitely excited about participating. Again, I'm going to try not to double dip on books for my challenges, but we'll see how that goes. I'm hoping to the Mor-book-ly Obese level, although I'd like to do the Do These Books Make My Butt Look Big? level because it's a funny title. I have to read eight adult books of over 450 pages, with at least three weighing in at over 750 pages. Again, given my proclivity to buy mountains of classics, this shouldn't be hard to find in my TBR stack, although finishing all of them will be a challenge! Too bad I read so much Victorian literature before I went to London; I'd have had even more to choose from!

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas - 1095 pages
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand - 752 pages
The Decameron by Boccaccio - 807 pages
Don Quixote by Cervantes - 1050 pages
War and Peace by Tolstoy - 1296 pages
Great American Short Stories from Hawthorne to Hemingway - 536 pages
The Idiot by Fydor Dostoevky - 564 pages
Barchester Towers by Trollope - 560 pages

Finally, Amanda at Fig and Thistle is hosting a Truth in Fiction Challenge where you read and post about pairs of books - one fiction and one non-fiction - about the same topic. I tend to read this way anyway, and I think it would be fun to combine the posts. Here are my ideas for some pairings. I'll hit the PhD level if I actually finish all of these!

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmond Burke
The Life of Charlotte Bronte by Elizabeth Gaskill and Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe and The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass
Shogun and A History of Japan
Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton and Edith Wharton by RWB Lewis
North and South by John Jakes and Civil War Stories by Webb Garrison
Becoming Jane Austen and Jane Fairfax

Bochus Yule

2011-12-14T18:32:00.000-06:00

I grew with weekly visits to the library. I loved Saturday mornings, going with my mom and sometimes my little brother to the library, where I had to be dragged away with a giant stack of books. The branch I went to had a lovely indoor courtyard area with cushy chairs and I loved spending time there. After my house and my grandparents' house, it was a home away from home.

Once I got older, going to the library wasn't cool any more, or I suppose, I became more concerned about what was and what wasn't cool and stopped going. I still spent nearly all of my allowance on books and visited the library book sales and came home with a cartload of books, but I didn't check out books. It wasn't until the last two years that I've returned to the library.

The library I go to now isn't as cozy as the one I grew up near, but it's a good library, it's part of a large system that lets you reserve books online and have them sent to your branch from any of the other branches and it doesn't have that eau de homeless person smell that the library near my college did.

So, that's why I'm participating in Clare at The Literary Omnivore's Bochus Yule. Since I've found a few books in my TBR pile that no longer interest me, I'll probably donate a few books. Also, since I won't be participating in the Friends of the Library booksale like I usually do, I'll donate some money instead. If you're interested, check out her site for more info on why she started the Bochus Yule and how you can participate!

The Handmaid and the Carpenter

2011-12-12T17:23:00.000-06:00

I happened to see The Handmaid and the Carpenter by Elizabeth Berg on my last trip to the library and grabbed it. It looked like a good cozy story to read with the chill hitting the air and Christmas approaching. It's a retelling of the story of Mary and Joseph and the birth of Jesus.

While I think this was a clever idea for a story, and I did read it in one sitting while cozily curled up with my cats, it fell a little short for me. She worked from the story in the Bible, which is pretty short, and she seemed somewhat hesitant to add too much to the story. It does help flesh out Mary and Joseph and you see how they many have both reacted to the situation they were in, but they still lacked depth.

I think part of the story struggled from Berg's not taking a clear stance on what actually happened. You could read the story either way, which on one hand works because that's what people do with the original story, but she leaves you feeling like you can't trust the characters and aren't sure what happened. She implies that Mary could have been raped, although Mary denies it, and they are visited by people immediately after his birth who proclaim Jesus the Savior. Mary and Joseph don't start those stories and aren't seeking that attention. Berg does show a few glimpses of Jesus as a child, and how if he was the savior, he must have been a very interesting, different child. Can you imagine a child who doesn't sin? His brothers and sisters must have hated him and tried to get him in trouble. Can you imagine the lectures they would get from their parents? "Why can't you be more like your brother?" "But, mom, he's without sin! That's not fair! I don't have a chance to look good next to him!" And, when you tried to start a fight he'd just keep turning the other cheek.

So, while there are some interesting points that the book raises and makes you think about, overall I'd say this is one to skip. Viewed on its own, it's a flat story with flat characters. Berg's writing in her other stories I've read is much better and her characters are more fully developed in the few books I've read by her. I'd pick up one of her other stories or better Christmas stories such as A Christmas Carol or Little Women instead.

Atlas Shrugged

2011-12-11T20:40:00.000-06:00

It took me forever to get going with Atlas Shrugged, but it was so worth it in the end. Rand's dense sentences pack meaning into every word, unusual for such an immense work. In the beginning, I dreaded picking it back up and had to force myself to keep reading, wondering why I was torturing myself for fun. Everything takes off in the middle though, and it now clearly takes a place in my top 10 favorite books of all time.

I'll admit, for the first 500 pages, I was irritated. It felt like slogging my way through a swamp of philosophy and I kept getting mired down trying to make sure I understood each sentence. I was shocked by the behavior of Hank Rearden and the emphasis on not giving charity and being entirely selfish. I didn't think I could get through a work that was pushing an agenda like that, and it didn't even have any interesting plot or well developed characters at that point to keep me interested.

I actually set the book aside for a few months, something I rarely do. I just recently returned, and forced myself to read a chapter a day. Fortunately, I quickly reached the page 500 mark, and somewhere around there the story took off. By this time, I had become much more connected to the characters and they seemed much rounder, more like actual people instead of stooges for an agenda. The plot also took off, although this clearly never becomes a plot-driven book. I finished the second half of the book in three days.

What happened to turn the book around for me? Two things happened - one was learning more about Dagny and her experience in the corporate world. There are few books out there that cover the corporate world at all, and seeing such an accurate presentation of some of the stuff execs pull was fascinating to read and pulled me further into the story. She's such a strong, driven, intelligent character who just tries to do what's best for her company and she has to fight stupid, lazy, corrupt people at every turn.

The second thing, the thing that made the book for me, is John Galt. The "This Is John Galt Speaking" chapter is incredible. It's a 64-page speech overflowing with philosophy and psychology and economics. Ironically, while it's a chapter focused on rational thinking, I actual teared up while reading it. And I very rarely cry. I returned back to it several times right after finishing it and reread and marked passages.

While there are many, many philosophical ideas to gleam from this section, some of which I don't agree with, some I do, and many that I don't claim to understand, I think the main point boils down to making sure you are using your mind to its fullest. It's about the value of thinking and about how true happiness comes not from escaping our thoughts but through using our mind and thinking.

It also talks about how so much of the world focuses on taking away our desire and ability to think. Too many bosses just want robots who will do exactly as they are told, despite what they may claim to the contrary about wanting "A" players. Teachers often just wants kids to shut up and memorize what's going to be on the test. Even religious leaders often focus on only relying on faith and don't focus on really examining your beliefs. Politicians of course don't want people to think, just to pass control over to them so they can think for us. Most of these people despise being questioned, and too often children are taught to stop asking "why" - either by their parents, caregivers, teachers or all of the above.

I never grew out of the stage, and it's gotten me trouble throughout my life. From second grade, where I wouldn't stop asking why I couldn't work out of the third-grade book since I'd already used the second-grade book in first grade (where my teacher saw my advanced reading schools and bumped me ahead) until finally she gave in after realizing the threat of discipline wouldn't stop my questioning, to more recently in the business world where I've questioned decisions of executives and debated with them. Sometimes this has gotten me ahead, sometimes it's gotten me in heaps of trouble.

Most of the people I've seen who question things in the business world and try to make positive change end up forced out or fired. This is a major source of frustration to me and has caused me to leave positions before as well. That's why I loved this explanation: "Any man who's afraid of hiring the best ability he can find, is a cheat who's in a business where he doesn't belong. To me - the foulest man on earth, more contemptible than a criminal, is the employer who rejects men for being too good." I can sadly name several amazing people who were fired or forced out of a company for just that. It amazes me that this happens, that execs can be so threatened by others who are smarter than them that instead of encouraging them to make advancements for the company, they'll cast them aside because they are intimidated.

John Galt emphasizes that going through life unthinking is essentially sleepwalking through life and you're not truly living. His explanation of happiness so hit home with me and made me clearly explained why I'd been so unhappy at work the last two years in a much more succinct way than I'd ever explained it before.

"Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy - a joy without penalty of guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind's fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but a producer."

I was so unhappy at work for many reasons, but I think it boils down to that - I was being told not to think, I was helping people who clashed with my values and I was not producing anything of value. Atlas Shrugged reminded me of the vital importance of thinking. It's part of the reason why I wanted to start blogging again. I don't want my reading just to be for entertainment - I want it to make me think and to challenge me. Blogging helps me think through a book and respond to it instead of rushing on to the next one. It also made me want to continue reducing the amount of TV I watch, which has gone down dramatically since I stopped watching several shows and cancelled Netflix. I'm also trying to eliminate other activities that just don't add value to my life so I have more time to focus on things that are important.

While you probably won't agree with Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and may have to force yourself to get through the first part of the book, I promise it's worth it to give Atlas Shrugged a try.

A New Beginning

2011-12-10T11:56:00.000-06:00

I've decided to start book blogging again! I've missed tracking what I read and taking time to reflect on each book instead of rushing on to the next one. I've also missed the book blogging community. I've continued reading many book blogs, but I haven't been commenting or having conversations with people or participating in community events.

Plus, I've decided I have to stop the madness with my TBR piles. I counted the number of books I own and the total came in at a staggering 502!!! That's insane! (In case you're wondering, I own more books that I have read, although I haven't counted and inventoried them.) Why do I continue buying books and checking out massive piles of books at the library each week when I've already spent so much money on books taking up space in my house that I haven't read?

So, my focus is going to be on reading these books. I think blogging about it will help me to stay on track and get through my list, since this process will take several years. I still plan to use the library and read some books that aren't on my list, but primarily I will read from my stacks.

In addition to my gigantic TBR stacks of stuff I own, I also have a ton of books that my mom has let me borrow. We swap books back and forth, and I've held on to too many of her books and have a small bookcase full. So, I'll be reading two books each month from that stack as well.

I'm planning to start a list for my TBR books here. I've got a spreadsheet for tracking, but I'll probably add a list here in case people are curious about what's coming up. There will be some books I'll probably decide I don't want to read and will donate instead, such as some of the business books I got for free in my last job. I also have a lot of books I've gotten at library book sales dating back to high school (which was over 10 years ago!!!) and don't really fit my reading tastes any more, so some of those may go in the donation pile instead as well.

To help motivate myself, I've made a rather counter-productive seeming incentive plan. For every 50 books I read from my TBR stacks (books I don't read and just donate or non-fiction books I just skim or partially read won't count), I get to buy three books from Persephone, Virago or the Morland Dynasty series. Those books aren't readily available from my library system and are items would like to own, but outside of these incentive books, I can't buy any new books. :( That's what the library is for!

I'm looking forward to jumping back in to the book blogging community, signing up for challenges and lots of reading!

The Wedding Girl

2010-09-01T12:45:00.000-05:00

I had no idea until a couple of weeks ago that Sophie Kinsella wrote books under her real name: Madeline Wickham. I noticed on Amazon that books my Wickham were suggestions for people who liked Kinsella and Jennifer Weiner, so I looked into her and realized she and Kinsella were one and the same! I immediately headed to the library and checked out
The Wedding Girl. This was written before the Shopaholic series, and the writing feels a little less polished. However, I really liked this book and was surprised by the ending, which usually doesn't happen this type of novel. Wickham is still quite funny here, just as she is in the Shopaholic series. It's a fast read and will keep you entertained. It's light and fluffy, but at the same time it's more serious than the Shopaholic books. If you're a fan of Kinsella, I would definitely suggest checking this out!

Jemima J

2010-08-23T06:49:00.001-05:00

Jemima J is the first book I've read by by Jane Green. Green's name always pops up on Amazon when I look at books by authors I enjoy such as Sophie Kinsella and Jennifer Weiner, so I decided to give her a shot.

Jemima J is partially centered around internet dating. It was published in 1999. That makes it quite hilarious, in ways both intentional and not.

It's quite funny and amazing to think how far we've come in just over 10 years. Jemima and her friends are amazed at this shiny new thing called the internet and they can't wait to get on and try it out. Which takes a while since they're using dial up. No one in the book has a cell phone and they use calling cards for long distance. I remember thinking I was quite cool in high school because there was this boy I had a crush on who lived in Tulsa and got a calling card so he could call me. I thought it was all quite grown up. How much easier a long distance relationship between Tulsa and OKC would be today. I actually did have a cell phone at that time because my parents were totally paranoid about me driving by myself, but it didn't have long distance and I was one of the few teenagers I knew at that time that had one. That would have been my sophomore year of high school, 1997. Robbie and I also e-mailed back and forth with the few AOL minutes we had available. Which seemed so amazing at that time. I sit here looking at what I'm doing online right now and thinking about all of the other things we can do and it's just amazing how quickly it all exploded.

The first thing Jemima and her friends Ben and Geeraldine do online is look up porn simply because they're curious that it really exists out there. It's quite funny reading about them deciding what to type and then waiting patiently while a picture loads line by line. Remember when pictures used to load like that? Then they go to a chat room because that was about the only other thing you could at that time.

And yet how things stay the same. Once there, they create a profile for a young girl and promptly get hit on by an old man. Then Jemima comes back the next day and she and another guy start flirting and suddenly they are internet dating.

Jemima J is a rather large woman at the beginning of the book, but she doesn't want her hottie in LA that she's dating online to know that so they have the graphics guy at the newspaper they work for Photoshop the photo to make her skinny. Then of course the guy wants to meet her. What will she do? The book is about her struggle to lose weight and her huge crush on Ben, one of her coworkers, as well. Will she lose the weight? Will she choose Brad the internet hottie or Ben? Will she be happy?

You'll have to read the book to to find out. Overall, I really enjoyed this book, but there was one thing that would occasionally make me want to reach out and slap Green or perhaps her editor. The book goes back and forth from first person narratives to a third person omniscient narrator. At times this was jarring and felt like Green just couldn't make up her mind on which way to go and did both and for some reason her editor didn't make her pick one. Other times, and especially as a got further into the book, this became quite enjoyable. I like getting both perspectives, and the third person narrator was usually quite funny. I usually like having multiple narrators, but it just didn't flow naturally for me in the beginning of this book. If that annoys you this might not be the book for you. Otherwise, it's a good, quick read that will give you some good laughs and perhaps motivate you to get up and exercise and eat a little better.

Have you read any of Jane Green's other books? Any favorites?

On Mystic Lake

2010-08-22T06:28:00.003-05:00

I really love my cats, but sometimes I really don't enjoy being a pet owner. My cats decided they HAD to eat at 5:30 this morning. That's even earlier than I get up during the week. I tried ignoring them, but they sounded like they were breaking the bedroom door down and scratching it so I gave in, then couldn't go back to sleep so I decided to catch up on some blog posts.

I read Kristin Hannah's Firefly Lane last year and loved it so when I saw her On Mystic Lake on sale at The Strand bookstore in NYC in May I picked it up. It's a about a woman who drops her daughter off at the airport for a summer abroad immediately following her high school graduation and when she and her husband get home he promptly tells her he's leaving her for another woman. That's not a spoiler, it's on the back cover and happens on about page 3. Up until that point Annie had a seemingly perfect life and it all comes crashing down on her. She decides to leave LA while her daughter is gone and go back home her small hometown in the Pacific Northwest where she rekindles a romance with a boy from high school.

I read the first half of this book very quickly, on an airplace home from LA actually. At that point I was a fairly captive audience because the other unread books I had with me were more literary and it was very late at night and I couldn't concentrate on those. Once I got home though, the book sat untouched for two weeks. But again, once I picked it back up, I finished it quickly. It's got a nice story and you care about the small town characters. The problem was with Annie. I just didn't identify with her at all. I think most women would though, so take this with a grain of salt.

Annie is completed identified by her husband and daughter. She's lost who she really is and has no life separated from them. I absolutely can't identify with that, but I know that is a common issue for mothers, so this may be a great book for someone going through that. For me, I couldn't understand how she got to that point. I can't fathom losing my identity that way. That's one of the many reasons I don't want kids. This made it hard for me to emphathize with her. I could understand why her husband left, even though he was clearly a jerk and had a lot of other issues himself once we get to know him a little bit better. I'm certainly not saying that he was right to leave her, just that I understand wanting to. I wanted to leave her at several points. I do think a lot of moms would identify with her though, so I don't want to leave the impression that isn't worth reading. It just didn't work well for me. I'm still going to try more of Hannah's books, and I strongly recommend Firefly Lane if you haven't read it.

Espresso Tales

2010-08-09T12:27:00.002-05:00

I finished Espresso Tales on the way to LA nearly two weeks ago but haven't had a chance to write about it! Oddly enough, I read Alexander McCall Smith's first book in this series, 44 Scotland Street, on a plane as well. They are good for plane rides since the chapters are so short it's easy to find a stopping place for all the frequent interruptions you experience while traveling.

McCall Smith's books all have a cozy feel to them. I sort of just want to hug them. The characters are all so wonderfully flawed and real. Although the coziness is broken by Bertie's evil mother, who I would take delight in torturing. I don't know how you can read about her without feeling the need to slap her on the back of her head. Fortunately Bertie's dad is beginning to stand up for himself, so perhaps the next book will feature her having to cave in on some things.

What's so awful about her? She has these firm beliefs in the fabrication of gender differences and so dresses Bertie in pink pants instead of jeans and paints his room pink. He goes to school for kids with crazy parents who name their kids things like Tofu. He's not allowed to do anything fun. Instead he learns Italian, takes yoga, learns music. He's six. Six! I'm all for focusing on education but wow she doesn't let him have any fun. And he can't go to a birthday party because it's at a bowling alley! Crazy.

And what's craziest of all? She takes Bertie to therapy. Where she and the doctor flirt and can't understand Bertie's problems. Because they all stem from his crazy mother and neither of them want to see that! It's all written so cleverly and is so funny though.

McCall Smith also just pokes in little asides on life and politics and consumerism and people in general that are hilarious. That's what I like most about the books, probably. I can't wait to check out the next one and I hope you all do too if you haven't read him before.

I need a little light-hearted reading right now - any suggestions of other funny books to read?

Anna Karenina

2010-08-07T13:03:00.002-05:00

I finally finished Anna Karenina! It took much, much longer than usual for me to read, but I loved it! I already wrote a post on the first half if you'd like to check it out.

I think one thing that really struck me in reading the book at this is time is how everyone in it feels trapped. I felt trapped in my own life recently, made a job change, and started my own businsess on the side. You can check out my business and blog on content marketing over at www.sparksmarks.com. I've also jumped on Twitter, so feel free to follow me on Twitter @sparksmarks.

One thing that stayed consistent from my first post is my love for Levin. Seriously, he's now one my most favorite characters ever. I'm a little bit in love with him actually. As he reminds me of my husband I suppose this is good! I love how he works in the fields alongside his workers and respects them and doesn't have the typical aristocratic attitude.

I mentioned last time how he and Anna are foils of each other, which intensified in the second half. Both long for happiness and are searching to find it and think they find it at one point but then realize the were wrong, then both feel trapped but choose very different ways of handling that.

Some spoilers, although I think most people know about the "big" spoiler:
Anna feels trapped in her marriage and finds something she thinks will make her happy in Vronsky. You emphathize with her at this point because she didn't choose her first marriage and you can't help rooting for her to be happy, although the choice of abandoning her son is hard to understand. But leaving didn't make her happy, and having a second child made things worse. I think perhaps she had post-partum depression, understandable as she nearly died in childbirth and was most likely struggling with loving this child when she had abandoned her first. This led to her not bonding with the child. This continued and grew worse, and eventually she loses her mind. She becomes paranoid and feels there's no possibility of happiness for her except in death, leading to her suicide.

Levin, on the other hand, pursues his happiness in his land. He tries to find happiness with Kitty, but she rejects him and so he focuses entirely on his land and tries to believe he can be happy this way. Eventually he realizes he cannot be happy without Kitty and after learning of her change of heart they unite. But even then he still struggled - with fear, with uncertainty, with questions. He too considers suicide at one point, but instead chooses to believe in God and finds happiness that way.

I was surprised at how uplifting the book was in the end since I knew about Anna's suicide going in. I was surprised that it had hardly a ripple affect on the majority of the characters. I was surprised that so much of the book was about Levin. I was surprised that Anna Karenina is now on my top 10 list of favorite books.

Interesting quotes:
"It used to be that a freethinker was a man who had been brought up with notions of religion, law, morality, and had arrived at freethinking by himself, through his own toil and struggle. But now a new type of self=made freethinkers has appeared, who grow up and never even hear that there were laws of morality, religion, that there were authorities, but who grow up right into notions of the negation of everything - that, as wild men."

That rings true to today as well.

"And it occurred to her how incorrect the saying was about a curse being laid upon woman, that in pain she would bring forth children. 'Never mind giving birth, but being pregnant - that's the pain." This passage goes on to have a woman talking about how she was freed when her child died. She was free from the work, the worry, the bondage. Darya is horrified at this, but then thinks about the horrors of pregnancy, childbirth, nursing, sleepless nights, pain, cracked nipples, illnesses. I was surprised to see this addressed this long ago.

How to Read a Novel

2010-07-18T21:22:00.003-05:00

Not quite sure why I picked up a book called How to Read a Novel when I haven't even had time to read lately, but I did. The new job is going well, but I've got a longer commute I'm adjusting to and I'm simultaneously trying to start a new marketing focused blog and co-launch a leadership blog and write a book. And my high school reunion was last night. So it's been a little crazy, and I've clearly lost my mind. I think it's because I have so much more energy since quitting my old job and so I'm going crazy starting new projects but not actually finishing anything. I've even started a half dozen new books instead of finishing the ones I was already reading. Being able to walk to the library on my lunch break isn't helping in that area either. I can walk to our large downtown library and browse and read. Unfortunately I've been doing too much browsing and not enough reading.
One book I did manage to finish this week is How to Read a Novel by John Sutherland. I did enjoy this book, but let me tell you, the title is all wrong. It should be How to Buy a Novel or How to Try to Select Novels or something. Since I flipped through it before checking it out at the library I knew what I was getting, but I can see that being off putting to people if you didn't look inside a little more closely.
Sutherland gives suggestions on what to look for in a novel when you're browsing so you can decide if it's worth devoting your limited reading time too. My favorite tip was to turn to page 69 and read it and if you like it, you'll probably like the whole book. People tend to bring their A game to page 1, and by page 69 they've probably burned out if they're going to or hit their stride.
I'll be honest, most of the rest of the advice was kind of not helpful. He mainly said that you can't really trust anything - not the flap, certainly not the quotes, not reviews, not best seller lists. So, to be honest, I didn't really feel like this book was overly helpful in doing what it was supposed to do - tell me how to select novels I'll enjoy reading. And he seems rather anti-Harry Potter so I hold that against him.
However, I liked the book. Sutherland was at his best when he just rambled about books. He packed in a ton of examples of various books, and I enjoyed reading those portions, getting his take on different things. It made me think I would enjoy reading his book reviews. I think that's really where he is strength is. And I was quite happy to note that his one book he would take to a deserted island (excluding the Bible or Shakespeare) would be Vanity Fair. That's one of my all-time favorite books! I was a little surprised because his book tastes seem to run to the more recent, uber-literary types, so I was excited about his choice and explanation.
I found it interesting that during one of his ramblings, he said he thinks all fiction readers fall into one of two camps: you like either Thackeray or Dickens. He admits you can like both (which I indeed do) but that you'll tend to read books that are more like one or the other. He said Thackeray is more conversational, as though the author is telling you a story. Dickens is more theatrical, where you sit and watch the action unfold. That probably does explain why I do prefer Thackeray, and thinking about it, I do prefer books that are more conversational, like the author is sitting next to you telling a story. Swift does this, and Picoult, and Austen, and the Brontes. Those are some of my favorite authors. The Great Gatsby. I like narrators. With Dickens, you feel a little removed from the story. It's more like watching a play/TV show/movie. That may be why a lot of people don't enjoy him as much these days. I felt that way about the works I've read (which isn't much!) of Faulkner and Woolf.
Well, I feel like this blog post was rather a nice tribute to Sutherland since it rather rambles on as well. I'm not sure if this post is helpful in determining if you'll like this book or not. Maybe if you liked the post you'll like the book and vice versa. Regardless, I hope you find great books to read this week! And let me know what you think about the Dickens vs. Thackeray issue. I'm interested to know what you think!

Anna Karenina - Part 1

2010-07-08T20:20:00.000-05:00

Welcome to today's stop on the Classics Circuit Imperial Russian Literature tour, where I'll be reviewingAnna Karenina. Make sure to check out all of the other stops on the tour as well. I want to apologize for getting this post up late today instead of this morning. I'm trying to adjust to my new job and I haven't quite adjusted my schedule right yet. I also want to apologize for this being part 1 of a review instead of a whole review. I am only halfway through with Anna Karenina. I totally overestimated what I could get done in my time between jobs and trying to deal with all the things associated with a job change. I really just should have started it earlier though. But, it's such a big, dense book that doing two posts is probably a good idea anyway.

Despite my slowness in reading it, I'm loving Anna Karenina. And it's actually not as difficult a read as I expected. It's an interesting story with great characters. It really is a dense book though - lots of stuff going on, pages overflowing with characters, an abundance of details. And it's all meaningful. It's not a book you can read while mentally checking out. You really have to concentrate, which is something I've been lacking lately!

So, why is it worth the read? What they say is true - the Russians truly are the masters of the novel. In Anna Karenina, there are so many characters with overlapping stories that serve as a foil or foreshadowing of other characters and relationships. What surprised me so far is that despite the title and what I've heard back the book, Levin is the character I focus on the most and who seems the most alive. I'm a little bit in love with him actually. He's got his faults and certainly isn't some sort of Prince Charming/Mr. Perfect, but he's intelligent, rational, intense, insightful, and wise. I look forward to getting back to him each time the narration goes elsewhere. I'm rooting for him to live happily ever after. Hopefully his ending is a foil to Anna's!

I've also been surprised at how much I empathize with Anna. Going in, I knew she would cheat on her husband, and I expected to dislike her. I also expected that to happen much later in the book, but it happens right up front. Which makes it more interesting that I'm able to empathize with her. Tolstoy somehow makes you grasp the essence of his characters right from the start. With Anna, you instantly know she's not a bad person. You know her home life isn't happy, that she didn't chose to marry Karenin. That she deserves happiness and isn't going to get it. There is so much foreshadowing through the novel, which is another reason why the book is so dense. Every word could have an impact on later events, every action leads to reactions that resonate through the rest of the novel.

It's hard to describe the way Tolstoy crafts his novels. I feel like when I try to explain why I like them I can't come close to conveying what I mean. Clearly I'm not the wordsmith Tolstoy is. I know his books are intimidating, but I really do recommend giving them a try. Check out the Classics Circuit for other Imperial Russian writers and check back here for part two, hopefully soon!

Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon

2010-07-02T09:26:00.000-05:00

It's both quite sad and satisfying that I've now read all of Jane Austen's fiction. I've out on reading Lady Susan, The Watsons, and Sanditon for years. The last time I read a new-to-me Austen novel was seven years ago, during my junior year of college when I read Persuasion. I had actually been holding out on reading that one because I thought that would finish her off, but was assigned it in one of my English classes. So I was quite happy to learn about these other three works.

Lady Susan is a complete short novel Austen wrote early in life. The Watsons and Sanditon are two fragments of unfinished novels. Together, they represent three phases of her writing styles.

Lady Susan is an epistolary novel, a novel written in letters. That form was quite popular in the eighteenth century, especially with writers such as Fanny Burney and Samuel Richardson, both of whose works Austen enjoyed. Austen's first drafts of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility were also written in this format, but she revised them later on. Which was definitely a good thing. Although Lady Susan is quite enjoyable, it's not up to Austen's normal abilities. Which is completely understandable since it's an early work, and also because the epistolary novel doesn't stand the test of time as well. Although I personally really enjoyed Evelina by Fanny Burney and Pamela by Richardson, they clearly pale in comparison with Austen's other works. They are highly melodramatic and you have to suspend you disbelief at some of the stretches the author's take to make the form work. I remember writing a paper in the same college class where I read Persuasion about Evelina and Pamela and the epistolary novel's by nature unreliable narrators. You have to think, would a young girl really write that much about a guy she likes to her guardian, a reverend? Is Pamela proclaiming her innocence just because she's writing to parents? But in Lady Susan, Austen keeps the melodrama to a minimum and has the characters write more logically, but this ruins some of the fun of that medium. You also don't get as well-rounded characters, and since Austen has such wonderfully developed characters in her other works you feel like something's missing.

I'm not saying all of that to say I didn't enjoy Lady Susan. I did. Lady Susan is a great villainess, and again is a surprising turn for Austen, but in a good way. She's selfish, mistreats her daughter, flirts constantly, pursues married men, and just generally causes chaos. It's quite fun to read about her and the other characters responses to her. But the story is only about 100 pages, so there's not a lot to dig in to.

In The Watsons, you get more of your typical Austen fare. It's very similar in style and tone to her other novels. I couldn't read about Emma Watson without picturing Emma Watson, otherwise known as Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter movies, playing her. Emma was raised away from her family in the hopes of being an heiress, but that doesn't work out and she comes back home to her family, where some of her sisters are battling to get married so as not to become poor spinsters. Emma attends a ball and we're introduced to several young men who may vie for her hand. For just being a fragment, I really enjoyed this piece and wish it had been developed into a finished piece. In the introduction to my edition, they discuss reasons for this and don't land clearly on anything, but do comment on the fact that the similarities to both Emma and Pride and Prejudice may have caused her to stop writing it. Also, it's the only work dating from her time in Bath, and maybe she just didn't have the motivation to finish while there (she seems to have hated Bath and may not have had the creative power to concentrate there), and then she just didn't want to pick it back up years later after going to Chawton. One of the other interesting bits in the intro was a comparison of this fragment to Cranford. Having just finished Cranford, I thought that was interesting and can see that aspect of a small tight-knit community in both and that the overall tone is fairly similar.

Finally, we have Sanditon. Sanditon is the last piece she was working on before she died. Here you can see the progression from her early novels to the later novels such as Persuasion to something else. There's something darker in this fragment than her other novels, much like Persuasion has a different feel to it. But here there's a feeling that everything may not turn out alright. Mr. Parker is trying to turn Sanditon into the place to be, like Bath. There's a feeling that this might not work out so well hanging over the work. There's also a trio of hypochondriacs in the novel, who Charlotte, the main character, can't stand. Austen's own mother was a apparently a bit of a hypochondriac, and since Austen was most likely dealing her while trying to deal with her own very real illness, she chose to get her feelings out on paper.

Another interesting part of Sanditon is the introduction of a sickly, wealthy mulatto girl, Miss Lambe. I was quite surprised by her appearance, and that she is the richest of a group of students who come to visit Sanditon. I think that's a clue that something quite different was going to happen in this novel had Austen been able to finish it. The introduction says that Miss Lambe could have stepped right out of a Charlotte Bronte novel. So, it's interesting to read Austen's progression from mimicking the eighteenth-century styles, to developing her own, to then trying to build on that and keep pushing her limits and try for something that become more popular later in the century, long after her death. One can only imagine what works she could have pleased us with if she hadn't passed away so young.

If you haven't read these works because they aren't polished and two of them aren't even complete, I recommend that if you like Austen to go ahead and give them a try. It's worth it just for a little bit more Austen and to see her growth as an author through the three pieces.

Speak

2010-07-01T09:13:00.001-05:00

I had heard about Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson when it came out, but being an older young adult at the time, thought I was way to mature for it. :)

What's interesting is that I probably liked the book more now then I would have then. I think my 17-year-old self wouldn't have been very understanding of why Melinda stays quiet. I can't imagine not telling everything to the cops, my parents, everyone. I would have yelled at her for not standing up for herself. And I think that would have clouded my view of the book. I still feel that way now, but I'm much more understanding than I used to be. I also realize now how young 13 is and how someone of that age wouldn't stand up for themselves, especially if they aren't taught to do so. When you're younger, you tend to assume everyone grew up the same as you did, even though you know that's not true. My family so stressed standing up for yourself that I never thought to do otherwise. Whether it was standing up to second grade teacher about the assignments she gave me (which were the same ones I'd done in first grade) or today standing up to my now former boss and telling her she can't treat people the way she does, I've never had a problem speaking up. When I served on a jury a few years ago in a sexual assault case, I didn't have any problems sending the guy to jail with the maximum sentence. And I was the one to convince the on the fence jurors to do so too. Obviously those examples aren't the same as what happens in the book, and I don't mean to minimize what happens to her. And I've learned that many people aren't taught to stand up for themselves. They're taught only to obey authority, to stay quiet and out of trouble. And since Melinda's parents seem to be the type of people who would rather ignore a problem than solve it, it's no wonder she stays quiet.

I also think I would have been annoyed with Anderson's writing style as a teen. I was not a fan of modernism/post-modernism even back then, and just wrote off anyone who wrote that way at all. Although I'm still not a big fan, I appreciate those styles more now and something like Speak is just fine with me now, and I get that it works well for the story. I think the style probably speaks better to her target audience, I was just weird about things like that.

Overall, I did enjoy Speak, and it's a very quick read.

Cranford Part Two

2010-06-30T07:45:00.001-05:00

It's time for part two of the Cranford read-a-hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey. I loved this book! I think this is a great book to start with if you're not sure if you like reading classics in general or the Victorians specifically. It really was easy to read and entertaining.

I found it interesting to blog about this in two posts. In doing so, I realized the first half of the book was mostly funny, with lots of events to make you like the characters and laugh out loud. The second half focused on Miss Matty losing most of her money from a bad investment in a bank that goes under. It focuses on how the people of Cranford band together to help Miss Matty, even though many of them don't have much either. It was very sweet and touching. I also thought the solutions to her money problems were interesting, since most Victorian books that handle that issue focus on the young woman, and how she must marry or become a governess. That's about it. I like how she becomes a little entrepreneur for a while, even though it's not very genteel.

Overall, I felt that Cranford was really about community. All of these different people come together. I wonder if Gaskell was worried about losing that feeling of community as people began flocking to cities during the Industrial Revolution. It also made me thankful for the community my Grandma has in her neighborhood, which I compared to Cranford in my first post. They all keep an eye on each other and help each other out, and I know if something happened to her they would take care of her until my family got there. It's interesting though that at the same time, I have zero desire to get to know my neighbors and if it wasn't for the expense and yard work, I'd prefer to live where I don't have neighbors too close. I still enjoy reading about tight-knit communities though, and I am grateful to live in a city where I know we band together when it counts, such as after the Murrah Building bombing and the May 3, 1999 tornado. Just as the women in Cranford are happy to live there, I'm happy to be an Okie!

Gulliver's Travels Part Four

2010-06-30T07:30:00.002-05:00

We're at the end of our Gulliver's Travels read-a-long hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey. If you missed out of the rest of the discussion, you can read about part one, part two, and part three before checking out part four below.

In part four, Gulliver travels to the land of the Houyhnhnms, who rational, talking horses. There is a mutiny on Gulliver's boat and the men decide to become pirates, but first they must get rid of Gulliver. When he first arrives on land, he meets the Yahoos, who are barbaric humans. He recognizes that they are human-like, but doesn't see himself as of the same species as them. When he meets the Houyhnhms, he imagines that the people who domesticated and trained these creatures must be infinitely rational and wise and can't wait to meet them. He soon discovers that there are no such humans, and the Houyhnhnms are the rulers here.

Here again Gulliver trades stories with the creatures he meets, telling them about England and they sharing their culture with him. The Houyhnhnms can't believe he's actually a rational creature capable of learning, much in the way that we would be shocked to discover a talking, rational horse. The Houynhnms are purely rational - no emotions rule their lands. They have no wars, no real problems except for the a occasional Yahoo, and they live to think. At first, this land seems wonderful, I always start wanting to live in such a place, a place without drama and stress. But as Gulliver continues living there, we discover there's also no love and true joy either. Gulliver doesn't see that and continues wanting to be a Houyhnhnm, but as a reader, we see that Swift isn't advocating for a strictly rational society. Would we really want to live in a world with arranged marriages made solely for the purpose of breeding the best children? To have strictly two children, and if another couple loses one of there kids and aren't able to conceive, to give your child to them and then have another for yourself? To have no real emotional attachment to anyone? Sometimes, such as after losing a loved one, we may be tempted to think that life would be better that way, but do I really wish I had never loved so that I might never feel pain?

Although most readers probably come to see that they wouldn't really want that kind of life, Gulliver does, and goes a little crazy upon finally returning home. He converses with his horses for at least four hours a day and can't stand to be too close to other humans, even his family. Clearly Swift isn't promoting that! Again, I think he's promoting moderation. Society needs a lot more rational thought, but at the same time you can't swing to far and remove common human decency and love from the equation. A purely rational focus can lead to things such as believing it's okay to kill people who are physically or mentally handicapped or simply people who aren't contributing enough to society.

Lest you think that part four is entirely heavy, there were a few quite funny bits. Swift really rails against lawyers and doctors in this section. About lawyers, he says their job is to argue that white is black and black is white. He provides an example of a neighbor who tries to lay claim to one of his cows. Gulliver says he can't argue that the cow is rightfully is and that the neighbor has no claim because the lawyers and judges would never go for that, so he must either pay the neighbor's lawyer to lose the case or argue that the cow actually belongs to the neighbor and that Gulliver wants to take it from him! He also says that once they've twisted something once, it's a precedent and is therefore easy to do in the future.

One last thing I found interesting about the Houyhnhnms is that they educate their males and females the same, and could not understand why we would not do so. "And my Master thought it monstrous in us to give the Females a difference Kind of Education from the Males, except in some Articles of D
Domestic Management; whereby, as he truly observed, one Half of our Natives were good for nothing but bringing Children into the World: And to trust the Care of their Children to such useless Animals, he said was yet a greater Instance of Brutality." Well said.

I hope you enjoyed reading along. I may have to start doing multiple posts for larger books. It made it easier to delve into everything I wanted to discuss instead of leaving half of the things out so as to not have never-ending posts. Of course, that would require more time, so that may not happen. We'll see!

P.S. If you subscribe to this blog in a RSS feed, I'm sorry if you got a nearly blank post earlier today. I was creating a few templates for upcoming posts and accidentally hit "publish post" instead of "save now." Look for the actual post on the Lives of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence soon! Thank you!

Ethan Frome

2010-06-27T09:10:00.000-05:00

I've owned Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton since college but hadn't read it, despite loving The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth. When I read Summer recently for the Classics Circuit, I remembered Ethan Frome and figured it was about time to read it. It's really short and I read it in one day, so I'm not sure why I waited so long to give it a try.

However, it's definitely not up to Wharton's usual par in my opinion. I noticed several people seemed to share that opinion during the Circuit. A lot of them attributed that to the book not being set in NYC like most of Wharton's books. Since I enjoyed Summer, which was also not set in NYC, I thought perhaps I would enjoy Ethan Frome as well. But, it just didn't have anything that grabbed me. I'm usually much more attached to Wharton's characters than I was here. I finished this a week ago, and now I can't remember anyone's name except Ethan's. I still remember Lily Bart and Newland Archer even though it's been years since I've read The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, whereas I doubt I'd remember Ethan's name if it wasn't the title!

Also, the book was depressing. Now, I think all of her other books are fairly depressing too, so that's not a deterrent, but since I didn't care about the characters, it was just depressing and boring instead of depressing and moving. I didn't hate or anything, I don't want to make you think that, it just wasn't Wharton's usual quality.

The Three Musketeers vs. The Three Musketeers

2010-06-26T10:15:00.000-05:00

Since I read The Three Musketeers for the Classics Circuit a few months ago, I decided to try out one of the movie versions. I knew going in the Disney version probably wasn't going to be the best. But with Keifer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, Tim Curry, Oliver Platt, and Chris O'Donnell, how could it not be awesome. :) Well, it was definitely entertaining. Especially Chris O'Donnell's hair. That hair sort of stole the show. And then Keifer and Charlie had '80s hockey hair. And of course the whole book was compressed into not even two hours of action. Milady ended up being saved and a lot of other things were changed from the book as well. It's definitely not the movie version to see to get the whole story or to try to pass an English test without reading the book. But for some reason, I still sort of enjoyed it. I realize that probably means there's something wrong with me, but it was fun as long as you didn't focus on the fact that it should be good. And there's the awesome song performed by Bryan Adams, Sting, and Rod Stewart, forming their own set of three musketeers to perform the awesomeness that is "All for Love". It's totally not my normal musical fare, but it's cheesiness cracks me up and again, I some how enjoy it.

This is book/movie number one for the Read the Book, See the Movie challenge hosted by C.B. at Ready When You Are, C.B. I'm participating in.

Too Much Happiness

2010-06-25T08:08:00.000-05:00

Do you ever read a book and watch a movie, and then think, "Wow. I can never get those two hours back."? Um, yeah. That's how I felt after finishing Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro. I've really tried to stop reading books I'm not enjoying, but for some reason I stuck with Too Much Happiness. Maybe it was because it was a collection of short stories, so each story was a small commitment and a new chance for enjoyment. But no. I didn't like any of them. And I don't really have anything to say about the collection. I didn't like the characters, the stories seemed very flat, I took a nap almost every time I picked it up. It won the Booker prize in 2009, so clearly others enjoyed it, but it just wasn't for me, and I didn't really see what was award winning about it.

Autobiography/Memoir Challenge

2010-06-24T14:42:00.000-05:00

I decided to enjoy another challenge! Bobbie at Til We Read Again is hosting an autobiography/memoir challenge. You have to read four biographies or memoirs from June 20 to September 20. I have several biographies on my TBR list, so I'm hoping to get those knocked out for this challenge. I tend to pass them over for fiction, so hopefully this will inspire me to actually read them.

Gulliver's Travels Part Three

2010-06-24T14:00:00.000-05:00

Okay, I'm just a day late this time for part three of the Gulliver's Travels read-a-long hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey. I'm slowly catching up, but I've been bombarded with e-mails from former co-workers and friends about my job change and have had lots of fun things to do like take a drug test and preparing for the new job. But it was quite nice to take a break a rejoin Gulliver on his travels.

A lot of critics talk about about how part three doesn't fit with the rest of the book and is sort of seen as a problem section. It is different from the others, but I love this part. All of the other three sections focus on a specific group of people. In part three, Gulliver travels to several different places and meets a variety of different people groups. I remember being enthralled with this section the first time I read because I had no idea what would happen next. I also feel like some of the things in this chapter are really creative. Flying islands, people trying to turn excrement into food (again with the crudeness!), immortals, visits to the dead, there's a little something for everyone.

Everything about the island of Laputa vividly stuck in my mind from the first time I read it. I think that's partly because I could identify with the people there while at the same time identifying with Swift's satire of them. The people there are highly intelligent and focused. They prefer to spend their time in thought, to the point that they forget about more practical matters. They have to have flappers to hit their ears when they need to listen and their mouths when they need to speak. They get so focused on their thoughts that they forget to interact with people. As someone who sometimes does that, I thought that section was hilarious because it was so familiar! But at the same time, I realize that's really sad, and quickly grew frustrated with them as they can't focus on anything practical. I hate it when people can't bring things back to practical matters at some point, and they were actually rather irrational. Their houses were falling apart and they couldn't grow food. I think Swift is partly saying here that everything needs to be done in moderation. Anything pursued to the point of everything else falling apart can't be good.

Also, the image of the flying island being able to crash down on the lands below to end any rebellions the people were plotting was quite striking. As I mentioned in the discussion on part one, this signified Swift's views on how England treated Ireland at the time.

I also like reading about the crazy experiments the Royal Academy was doing in Lagado. I thought all of the experiments were funny, like the one I mentioned earlier about attempting to turn excrement back into food, trying to turn ice into gunpowder, and building houses from the roof down. The absurdity of it all was amusing. But then I read that the Royal Society in Britain was doing similar types of research! Swift was mocking this reliance on experiments that clearly don't make any sense.

Finally, I enjoyed reading about the Struldbrugs and Gulliver's reaction to them. I've never wanted to have immortal life, and have never understood the desire in others. It was interesting to watch Gulliver go from excitement at the thought of meeting such educated and wise people to seeing the tragedy that is their lives. By the end, he actually wants to take a few back to England to use a reason for why we should not fear death.

I'll leave it at that and hope that some of these stories have inspired you to give Gulliver's Travels a try if you haven't read it before.

Gulliver's Travels Part Two

2010-06-22T21:57:00.000-05:00

Well, it's almost time for part 3 of theGulliver's Travels read-a-long hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey and I'm just now writing about part one. I've had a crazy time personally, with both my husband and I looking for and accepting new jobs. I just turned in my resignation today and ugh, is that not a fun thing to do. I'm very excited about my new job though. However, all of the job searching, applying, interviewing, portfolio preparing, and stress has put a big dent into both my reading and blogging time. I hope to be a little more consistent soon, although settling into a new job will probably eat into some of that time too, especially since I will now have a longer commute. I'll be working downtown though, so I'm actually excited about that transition.

Anyway, on to Gulliver's Travels. Part two has Gulliver travelling to Brobdingnang, the land of the giants. It's a foil to the first part, so Gulliver goes from feeling like a giant to feeling like a Honey I Shrunk the Kids tiny person. It's interesting because he never changes, but others' perspective of him changes, which leads to a change in his own perspective.

The scene that always sticks with me from this section is rather crude. Gulliver is describing on of the giant women. He describes seeing a woman breast feeding with her six foot breast. Seeing the breast was so disgusting to him because he could see all of the imperfections and it just looked monstrous. I think it sticks with you because it's such a vivid image, and it's unexpected. Gulliver then goes on to say that it makes him think about his normal English ladies, and how they appeal beautiful because they are proportionate to him and therefore he can't spot all the tiny flaws in their skin for example, whereas the giants skin looks completely uneven, spotted with holes, and they smell gross. He then reflects on the fact that he found the Lillputians to be infinitely beautiful, probably because they were so small compared to him he couldn't see any flaws clearly. It's all about perspective. That also applies to how people treat him, with the Lilliputians viewing him as a weapon and the Brobdingnagians thinking he's a circus sideshow.

My favorite part of this section, however, is more political. Gulliver describes the politics and history of England, proud and boastful of his magnificent empire. The king of Brobdingnag thinks is laughable, at first because of his size and then because of his descriptions. After describing everything, Gulliver expects the king to be impressed, but instead he has several great quotes, including this one: "You have clearly proved that Ignorance, Idleness, and Vice are the proper Ingredients for qualifying a Legislator. That Laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose Interest and Abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them."

Um, how perfectly does that describe modern day America? America was still a colony at the time Swift wrote, and yet he nails it right on the head. Those are statements that are unfortunately true throughout history, through (probably) every country. Even those this is a negative example, this is one of the things I love most about reading. It's seeing how similar we are all, regardless of time and place. I also love reading about our differences, but the examples of sameness reminds me that we're all people. The Irish and English, the Protestants and the Catholics, the Lilliputians and the Brobdingnagians, they're all people.

Cranford Part One

2010-06-15T07:30:00.003-05:00

It's time for part one of the Cranford read-a-hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey. I've heard lots of things about Cranford and Elizabeth Gaskell's other works, but have never actually read anything by her. Ryan took one look at the cover of my copy and said, "What is that? Why are you reading something so boring?" I said, "It's Judi Dench! DAME Judi Dench! It's clearly going to be awesome." But I have to admit, I was a little nervous. A book about bunch of old ladies in a little bitty town gossiping? I'm wasn't sure how exciting this book would be.
The good news is that I love it! It's hilarious. The narrator cracks me up, as do all the ladies. They're quite entertaining. And Gaskell's writing style feels modern, more like you're reading a historical fiction novel than an actual novel from history if you know what I mean. The one time she used a term I wasn't familiar with, she defined it! It certainly wasn't what I was expecting from a Victorian novel, especially since she worked for Dickens and praises him in the opening chapter. That's actually a pretty funny scene, with two characters duking it out over Dickens vs. Samuel Johnson.

The book also starts out with an image of a cow dressed in grey flannel. It was trapped and removed most of it's hair and couldn't keep warm, so they dressed it in grey flannel. I keep picturing that and cracking up. My parents went a little crazy a few years ago and bought some land and some animals and have a few cows, so I keep thinking about driving up to their house and seeing a cow just standing there eating grass, wearing her flannel. And trying to imagine getting the cow to get into the flannel? Pretty funny.

I also liked it when the book talked about the ladies' views on eating oranges. They love them, but don't feel like they should eat them in front of others because the best way to eat them is basically just to suck on them, which is horribly messy and unladylike. I do the same thing! And I hate eating them for that reason. It was interesting to think about people thinking the same thing back in the 1840s.

Finally, I'm getting an extra kick out of this book because my Grandma totally lives in Cranford. She may live in a suburban neighborhood and not a tiny English village, but it's totally like Cranford. There's a bunch of older ladies (and a few men) who sit around and gossip and are all up in each other's business and know everything about what's going on. My Grandma had to get a new roof recently, and all the neighbors kept coming and spying on the workers and letting them know they were watching, like some sort of septuagenarian mafia. And my Grandma's a little bit particular, just like Miss Jenkyns, although not nearly so uptight! So, the book makes me think of her and that makes it a little bit more fun. If you're participating in the read-a-long, I hope you're enjoying it as much as I am!

Gulliver's Travels Part 1

2010-06-09T20:10:00.000-05:00

I'm very excited about part one of the Gulliver's Travels read-a-long hosted by Allie at A Literary Odyssey. Gulliver's Travels is one of my all-time favorite books. I first read it in college, then again while working on my Master's. At that time, I actually decided to focus on it and some of Swift's political writings for my thesis and did a done of research, but then decided to just do the test option instead of a thesis since I'd already written an undergrad thesis. I haven't read it since then, so I thought it would be nice to reread it while not in research mode.

If you haven't read it before, part 1 is the part you're probably familiar with anyway. It features Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians, the little people who think he's a giant. What surprised me so much the first time I read this is that it's not a kid's book at all, so it's weird to me that the story somehow has been turned in that. If that's your perception of Gulliver's Travels, you need to read the actual book. It's a satire about politics and while their are many references to early eighteenth century politics and relations between Ireland and England, many of the overall comments are relevant today.

As Gulliver watches these tiny people fight over things such as the proper way to break an egg or the height of their shoe, he laughs at them and their wars and power struggles and basks in his own superiority. But Swift wants us to think about how we're like the little people. I'm sure God sometimes can't believe the stupid things we humans fight about and laughs at our power struggles when He is clearly so much more powerful than we could ever hope to be.

He also notes that essentially the Lilliputians and Blefuscans are the same, and it's silly that they're fighting each other and trying to take over the other. The same thing was happening with Ireland and England at the time. Swift was born to English parents but was raised in Ireland, so he was right in the middle of the fighting and was a case in point that the English had no right to try to take over the Irish or feel superior to them in anyway. Then of course even within Ireland you had religious fighting between the Catholics and the Protestants, causing yet more problems.

And yet Swift didn't just sit by and suggest everyone sing kumbaya. He wrote highly satirical and offensive pamphlets, letters, and essays to stir up the Irish to throw off the shackles of the English and for the English to realize they should leave the Irish alone. He wanted to get people to the point where they could all leave each other alone. I think this is something a lot of pacifists miss. They tend to think that if they stop fighting, others will stop too. And while that may work in some instances, in many, it doesn't. Trying to get terrorists to stop fighting by leaving them alone doesn't work. Both parties have to be willing to stop before this works. I think that's what Swift was trying to do with this section. I think he demonstrated this when he had Gulliver lift all of the enemy ships of Blefuscu out of the water, showing them they didn't have the power to overtake Lilliput. Then when the emperor of Lilliput wanted to take that opportunity to turn Blefuscu into basically a province of Lilliput, Gulliver convinces him otherwise and helps orchestrate a peace agreement between the two.

I'm probably making this sound rather boring, aren't I? Well, Gulliver's Travels is quite funny. Even when you miss some of the references to things of the time period, there are plenty of things you will get. And Gulliver pees on her Imperial Majesty's palace to put out a fire. That's pretty funny. And gross and crude. Apparently dirty and body fluid related humor just never go out of style. There's also the part made famous in the kid's version, with the tiny people tying the giant Gulliver down, which is pretty funny. And parts 2, 3, and 4 all see Gulliver traveling to new and exciting places, so make sure to follow along for the rest of the read-a-long or check out the book for yourself. For more thoughts on part 1, remember to go to A Literary Odyssey.

The Hand That First Held Mine

2010-06-05T19:44:00.003-05:00

I loved The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, so I was quite excited to hear about Maggie O'Farrell's newest book, The Hand That First Held Mine. In both of these two books I feel like O'Farrell does a great job of developing characters while still having a great plot. The book flap hints at a mystery that will be unfolded, but the main focus is on the characters. Even once the mystery is revealed, it's more about how it impacts the characters than the mystery itself.
In The Hand That First Held Mine, the story goes back and forth between Lexie's story in the 1950s and Elina and Ted's story in modern day London. Inevitably, the stories end up colliding, but she crafts both of them beautifully separately. What fascinated me most was how Lexie was so independent and free and much of her story focused on her dating and her career, while Elina is trapped at home with a baby. It turned the stereotype of the 50s on its head, and I enjoyed that. Elina also reinforced my desire to not have kids, although I don't think that was O'Farrell's point. She describes the never ending cycle of cleaning, laundry, and feeding in vivid detail though, not shying away from stories about exploding baby poop that somehow ends up all over the walls. I know from some of my friends with kids that this actually happens.
There is a lot of build up before we even know there is a mystery to unravel, but O'Farrell's storytelling is enrapturing even when she's describing everyday life. Or maybe that's why she is enrapturing, because she captures everyday life so well. I could clearly picture the characters and rooted for some and hated others, so by the end I really cared how they would react to everything they've learned.
O'Farrell has a few earlier books as well, and I can't wait to read those too.

The Last Song

2010-06-01T10:17:00.002-05:00

I know that Nicholas Sparks' books have become predictable and are overly saccharine. But the guy still knows how to write a love story, and I still enjoy his books. Although I felt a little silly reading the mass market paperback version of The Last Song with Miley Cyrus on the cover. And the fact that it seems like the movie was lined up before the book even came out. But inspite of that, I did enjoy the book. It made for a good, lazy Memorial Day read.

The Last Song is about a 17-year-old girl falling in love and dealing with her relationship with her dad, who left the family three years ago and whom she now has to spend her summer with. It's funny to me that when I was in junior high and high school and read about teenagers falling in love, even if they had just graduated high school, silly. Who actually falls in love at that age, I remember wondering, despite the fact that my still very happily married parents met and started dating in high school. But I just assumed that wasn't realistic anymore. I fully expected to go to college, have some fun, and then maybe during my junior year fall in love. Instead I met my husband on the second day of school, when we were both just 18. And now we've been together for nearly 10 years, and married for nearly 6. So now when I read a story of two teenagers who just graduated from high school falling in love, I don't scoff anymore, and instead I remember falling in love with my husband. And that's why I enjoyed The Last Song.

Father Brown

2010-05-31T18:45:00.001-05:00

Welcome to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction blog tour hosted by the Classics Circuit. For today's stop, I'm reviewing
Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton. Before I start my review, I want to say that Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday is my husband's favorite book, and it's definitely up there on my list too. It's a great mind-tripping well-written mystery. I just want to preface my review with that so I don't steer you away from Chesterton entirely. You should read The Man Who Was Thursday; it's just around 150 pages and it's great.
But Father Brown is not. Too be far, I do see how other people could enjoy this collection of short stories. I know my husband does. But when I read a mystery, I want suspense. I want clues so that I can at least try to find the solution. And I want fun. I didn't get any of that out of Father Brown.
Father Brown is very literary. Even thought it's all short stories, half of each story has nothing to do with the mystery and is just more about life in general. I felt like the stories focused more on philosophy and things like how you never know when you're sitting right next to a murderer. The stories are all clever, but I just didn't find them interesting.
I had exactly the same feeling when I read Sherlock Holmes though. I only made it through two Holmes stories before deciding not to force myself to suffer through anymore, so I'm clearly not an expert, but the stories seem fairly similar on some level, and I think that if you enjoy the Holmes stories you would enjoy Father Brown. So I don't want to discourage everyone from reading them, I just want to explain why I didn't really care for them. I want my mysteries to keep me on the edge of my seat. Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown don't do that for me. They may actually be a lot more intelligent and literary reads than the mysteries I prefer, but when I read a mystery it's because I'm in the mood for an escape and I don't want something overly literary. (Now, I didn't really find Sir Conan Doyle's writing to be that great, but he's considered literary and his stories do have a more intelligent focus.) Maybe if I was better prepared going in and not expecting something lighter I would have enjoyed this more. I do want to point out that the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown are quite different though. Holmes is so egotistical, moody, and he overpowers the stories, while Father Brown hovers in the background, quiet, calm, supremely rational.
I did really enjoy this quote though: "It's part of something I've noticed more and more in the modern world...People readily swallow the untested claims of this, that, or the other...It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense and can't see things as they are." That theme came up quite a lot, that people often accept what others say without thinking about it, yet the question what is right in front of them. If you don't believe in God, you still search for something to feel that void and don't have the moral compass to prevent you from doing things like killing people or stealing or other things for your own benefit. Clearly not everyone who doesn't believe in God does those things, but it's a lot easier to do those things if you don't think there's some sort of eternal punishment awaiting you for doing them. Father Brown also talks a lot about being both a man of faith and a man of science, like Chesterton himself was. He believed that the two worked together, and that common sense makes you belief in God and that if you abandon him you abandon common sense. Although he's not very popular anymore, Wikipedia lists numerous authors who cited him as an influence on them, including C.S. Lewis and Neil Gaiman. Wikipedia also had this quote I found quite entertaining: "The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." So, while I didn't enjoy Father Brown as much as I had hoped, I'm still fond of Chesterton in general and hope you give The Man Who Was Thursday a try!

Gulliver's Travels and Cranford Read-a-longs

2010-05-30T11:47:00.002-05:00

A Literary Odyssey is hosting a read-a-long in June of one of my favorite books, Gulliver's Travels! It's about time I reread this, so I'm joining in on the fun, and I suggest you do too! You can sign up here. I hope to see you during the read-a-long!

A Literary Odyssey is also hosting a read-a-long on Cranford, and I decided to go ahead and sign up for that one as well. The sign up for that one is here if you're interested.

Mini-Reviews

2010-05-28T18:12:00.000-05:00

I usually prefer to review each book individually, but I'm so, so far behind I decided to do one post with a bunch of mini-reviews to catch up quickly. So, here's an overview of some of the books I've been reading recently. Enjoy!

The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley is the sequel to The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. I highly recommend both books. I loved this book for exactly the same reasons I loved The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, which was one of the best books I read last year.

Not My Daughter by Barbara Delinsky is about a group of high school girls who make a pact to get pregnant. When that actually happened a few years ago, I was horrified and shocked. I absolutely cannot comprehend that. At all. There are plenty of things I don't agree with or wouldn't do, but can still at least entertain the idea of how someone could do it. Even a lot of horrible things, like killing someone, you can comprehend on some level. But why on earth would a high school student get pregnant on purpose? The only reason I could come up with is to escape a molestation situation, believing that by getting pregnant the abuse would stop. But that's not what happens here. I hoped this book would bring me some perspective, but it didn't. I did enjoy the book for the most part, as you unravel exactly what happened with the pact and seeing how the main character, the mother of one of the girls and the high school principal, handles the situation. However, the way she reacts annoys me most of the time. Now, I'm not a mother, so I can't say with certainty how I would react. But, I'm pretty positive I would beat the crap out of the girl and take away any freedom and joy she had. I know that's what my mother would have done, which is one of the many reasons I would never have gotten pregnant in high school. I would react like Naomi on Private Practice. I loved the story with her daughter getting pregnant because I felt like she reacted like I would react. She just can't handle talking to her, or even seeing her, and she doesn't want to endanger her grandchild but wants to kill her daughter anyway. I felt like the parents in this book were for the most part too understanding, which probably helped lead to the bad behavior.

I never expected to read
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I thought it sounded tacky and used car salesman-y. But, we might be doing something with the Dale Carnegie institute with work next year so I thought I should read it. I was surprised to learn it was written in the 30s. It was actually pretty good. It's mainly common sense, but there were still some good lessons about being nice to people, how to listen to people, and how to show people that you value their thoughts.

The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofano is about a girl in the witness protection program. Cristofano is a great writer and I identified with the main character, even though I clearly haven't been in her situation. She's basically doomed for a life of mediocrity because she can't draw attention to herself, and she hardly knows who she really is. I felt like there was something more literary to this book than the packaging implies, so it was a nice surprise.

Alexander McCall Smith is one of my new favorite authors.44 Scotland Street is well written, funny, and insightful. McCall Smith creates wonderful characters, who you love despite their faults. There's just something really real about them. I also found myself laughing out loud several times. This book was very different from the other McCall Smith book I read, La's Orchestra Saves the World, but I thoroughly enjoyed both of them.

American Nerd by Ben Nugent was not as good as I expected. I thought it would be more about things nerds enjoy, but it was more about why people become nerds, which I still didn't feel like he explained very well. He rambled a lot, and talked in circles. I didn't feel like it was very well written, and I didn't really get anything out of it. I nearly stopped reading at several points, but old habits die hard and I still haven't quite broken myself of not finishing every book I start, although I improving.

And on to something better. Anna Quidlen is one of my favorite modern writers, and she definitely delivers with Every Last One. Like McCall Smith, she creates wonderful, real characters. That makes this book all the more heart wrenching. I can't really say much about this book without giving too much away, so I'll just say that you should read it!

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman has gotten a lot of buzz, and the last few books that were getting similar press just didn't do it for me (i.e. Let the Great World Spin, which I didn't finish), so I was a little skeptical, but the story about the old newspaper in Rome sounded intriguing. I'm glad I gave it a shot. It's sort of like Olive Kitteridge in that it is a novel, but is really a bunch of interconnected short stories about people connected with the paper. Rachman excels at drawing the different characters and making you want to know more. I was sad to come to the end of each section because I wanted to know what happens to them next. Sometimes they would show up briefly in another section, but you didn't get the full story. It's more like glimpses into parts of their lives. It's great when a book leaves you wanting to what happens next because you care about the people though, so I recommend this book as long as you're okay with not getting to know everything.

I did not enjoy The Language of Secrets by Dianne Dixon. Maybe it was because the overview I read made it sound wonderful: a man visits his parent's graves for the first time and finds his own tombstone, saying he died when he was three. Intriguing, yes? Well, it was a good idea for a story, but Dixon is not a strong writer. I should have paid more attention to the blurb by Sue Grafton on the back than the one by Kristin Hannah on the front. I like Hannah, but think Grafton is one of the worst writers I've had the misfortune to encounter. Dixon is much closer to Grafton than Hannah on my scale. The story was interesting enough for me to keep reading, although there's a rather stupid "twist" at the end that's just thrown in to be shocking but by that point you really just want the thing to be over and all of the characters to die a slow painful death anyway. Yep, in addition to the bad writing, I hated all of the characters. Not a pleasant one in the bunch. I especially wanted to strangle the main character's wife. She was completely obsessed with making her horrible father happy, even at the expense of her husband. And when she finally stands up to him, she expects some huge reward for how awesome she is for deciding not to treat her husband like crap. Anyway, clearly I would recommend skipping this one.

I've loved all of Emily Giffin's books, and Heart of Matter is no exception. Giffin is a masterful storyteller and character creator. Her characters always have strong faults and don't always do the right thing all the time, but she makes them real and lovable even when you don't approve of what they're doing. And in this book, one of the main characters is the sister to Dex, the main male character in Something Borrowed and Something Blue, and Rachel from those books is also present. I love when authors do that. It was fun getting to see them again.

Finally, I read Fall to Pieces by Mary Forsberg Weiland, Scott Weiland's ex-wife (or soon to be ex, I'm not sure if the divorce if final yet). I have had a major crush on Scott since I was 13. And it's still going quite strong. It was sad to read about their epic drug use, even though I clearly knew about that. It was interesting that they met before he became famous, when he was her driver and she was starting as a model. It made me like her more, that she wasn't some model who just hooked up with him because he was famous. It also made me feel quite sorry for her because being with him couldn't have been easy (although she has her own demons as well). She became close friends with Anthony Kiedis from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and roomed with Charlize Theron, so that was interesting to read about as well. I felt like the book was very well written, and offered what appears to be an honest glimpse into her life. She addresses her mental health issues as well, her struggles with being bi-polar and misdiagnosed for a long time. My mother-in-law is bi-polar, and reading about someone else's struggles with that helped me to understand her better. Overall, I thought this was a great read!

Whew! That was a lot of books to update you all on! I hope you enjoyed the mini-reviews!

How Reading Changed My Life

2010-05-26T17:31:00.000-05:00

How Reading Changed My Life is a collection of essays by Anna Quindlen, one of my favorite contemporary writers. I love reading about other people reading, so I jumped at the chance to read this book. I enjoyed all of the essays and seeing similarities between myself and someone I admire. If you enjoy reading about other readers and fell in love with Francie Nolan because she loves the library and makes plans to read through the whole thing alphabetically, this book’s for you. (Quindlen wrote an introduction to a recent edition of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the wonderful book featuring Francie, which is one of my all-time favorite books and made me like Quindlen all the more.)

This book made me think about my own experience with reading. My first memories are of learning to read (although my very first memory is of me jumping of the counter and splitting my chin on a metal Carebears trash can). I remember realizing that the black marks on the pages meant something, that they were telling my mom what to say. And so since I wanted to be independent even at three, I begged my mom to teach me how to understand them. She thought it would be fun to teach me a little bit of the alphabet, expecting to get to about D and give up for the day, but I learned the entire alphabet that day. And then immediately began putting the new information into practice with Dr. Suess and a few other simple picture books. And I’ve never looked back! (And if you’re a mom reading this and you’re a bit jealous of my mom, don’t worry, she got major payback from my brother. And he still turned out just fine despite learning to read much later and never learning to enjoy it.)

I, on the other hand, can’t really remember not loving to read. In first grade when we had a reading contest, I won by hundreds of books. We got Easter eggs to put on the wall for every book we read, and the poor teacher could barely keep up with me. I read twice as many books as the rest of the class combined. Fortunately for me and my social standing for the rest of my schooling, when teased about my nerdiness I was rather quick with my fist and good at insulting people. This saved me from really getting slapped with the nerd label. Ironically, it was that mouth and stubborn streak that caused a huge a fight with a friend later on in elementary school that left me turning to books for comfort, befriending all of the girls in the Baby-Sitters Club series. And they stuck with me much longer the friend who I eventually made up with.

The first really literary book I read that wasn’t some sort of abridged kid’s version of Huck Finn was Wuthering Heights. Their moodiness struck a chord with me in junior high and introduced me to a whole new world of books: classics and books that don’t end with happily ever after. And I still love to read books that my mom always deems depressing. But they allow me to feel something I may not otherwise (hopefully never in some cases) feel. They teach us how different people react to things, guiding us in how we react when faced with something similar. They allow us to travel the world, experience other cultures, and try new things from the comfort of our arm chairs. Quindlen makes a similar comment in the book, and notes that actually traveling this way is many times preferable to actual travel. I think that’s one of the reasons why I wasn’t too disappointed when we decided to postpone our trip to London that we were supposed to take at the end of last year. With the crazy economy and uncertainty and layoffs happening at work, we decided it would be better to get a refund and have that cash on hand in case something happened on go later. A part of me was actually relieved because I’m afraid that the real London can’t possibly hold a candle to the one in my head. Especially since the one in my head is fairly Victorian only with a better sewage and trash system and air conditioning. Modern London, with teenagers in jeans with iPhones and business people hurrying to their next meeting, isn’t what I’m envisioning. I’ll still go someday, probably sooner than later, but until then I’ll always have my books.

Intimations of Jane Austen

2010-05-25T18:26:00.000-05:00

Intimations of Austen is a collection of short stories related to the works of Jane Austen. I received a copy to review from the author, fellow book blogger Jane Greensmith, whose blog you can enjoy here.

Since Jane tends to read literary books and writes a literary, intelligent blog, I’m not sure why the literariness of the stories surprised me. Perhaps because most of the Austen-related fiction I’ve read is, well, not. Don’t get me wrong, I usually enjoy it, but most of it just isn’t what you would call literary. But Intimations of Austen is different.

Greensmith’s writing is truly exquisite. I’m always amazed when authors can write in such a poetic manner. Her words were like a dancer gliding over a smooth lake. I realize that’s not exactly possible, but for some reason that’s the image that comes to mind. That’s why I don’t usually write in metaphors and similes. I’m definitely more Hemingway than Tolstoy. But reading Greensmith’s work felt like reading poetry.

I also enjoyed that these stories were quite different from other Austen fan fiction I’ve read. Most of those tell exactly the same story from say, Darcy’s point of view, or are about what happens when Austen’s original books end. And there is a little bit of that here, but most of the stories offer something a little different. What if Darcy and Elizabeth don’t get married? What would happen when they meet 20 years later? What if Darcy reads words as colors, and connects those colors to the person’s soul? What if Jane Bennet loved someone before she met Charles Bingley? What is Mrs. Bennet really thinking?

Although I enjoyed all of the stories, even the one where Elizabeth and Darcy are not married (although at first I thought I was misreading something and had to start that story three times before it made sense, because I kept assuming that couldn’t be right!), I did have a few favorites. I really liked The Color of Love because it was so different. It mixed a little bit of science fiction with Mr. Darcy! In this story, Darcy reads in color based on the person writing. He can therefore judge people based solely on seeing their handwriting, causing him to make quick impressions of people. I enjoyed how Greensmith wove that into the existing story, giving us a fresh perspective on Darcy’s actions without simply telling the story from his point of view and having him tell us why he does what he does, she shows us why.

I also really liked the story told from Mrs. Bennet’s perspective, simply because she’s such a picked on character (well-deservedly for the most part), The Last Baby. She’s quite easy to tease, but here we get a quick glimpse into her mind and begin to understand her a bit more. You feel a little sorry for her because you learn she did want to learn new things, but after she started having babies Mr. Bennet wasn’t interested in teaching her anymore and her job became producing a boy so they wouldn’t lose their home.

There are seven other stories in this collection, and no, not all of them related to Pride and Prejudice, so make sure you check it out for yourself so that you can enjoy all of these enchanting stories!

Judy Blume, Margaret, and Me

2010-05-22T10:34:00.003-05:00

Every girl who grew up reading Judy Blume needs to read Everything I Thing I Needed to Know about Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume, edited by Jennifer O'Connell. It features essays from female writers such as Meg Cabot talking about what they learned from Judy Blume. I actually didn't recognize most of the authors, but loved most of the essays and will be going through the author list to fine new books to read!

The essays themselves reminded me about my own childhood growing up reading Judy Blume. My mom got me hooked on her books for younger kids first, starting with Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. She probably thought I would identify with Peter, having a demon child of a little brother myself. He was only two when he learned how to climb on top of the kitchen cabinets. She likes to say now that until he started school he probably thought his name was "Dammit Dustin." I completely identified with Peter. Except Peter was actually better behaved than me. I usually responded to my brother's antics with violence. And of course then I got in trouble too. Fortunately both of my parents were older siblings as well and knew that he had probably done something to deserve it. But at the same time, I thought that surely they could control him a bit better. But after reading the rest of the Fudge books, I became quite thankful that my brother wasn't nearly as bad as Fudge and my parents weren't as complacent.

And then I moved on to the pinnacle of pre-teen required reading for girls: Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. It's just one of those books that you never forget. I honestly didn't even identify with many of Margaret's desires and the book still meant a lot to me. Looking back, I think it taught me how to talk to other girls. It gave me the info I needed to fake it a bit. It also taught me what to do once my body started changing. I knew what to expect. I was a bit odd in that while I wanted to grow up, and I had crushes on boys starting from kindergarten and never stopping, there were other girly things I just didn't quite get. Like why boobs were so important. They seemed kind of uncomfortable to me, like they would get in the way. That opinion changed eventually, although they never did really concern me. One day I got them, and that was fine, and I still don't understand women who have breast implants. The thing that really got me with this book though, of course, is the other big womanly change. If any guys happen to be reading, look away now. :) This book taught me that most girls really, really want to get their periods. Me? It just completely grossed me out. Why on earth would you want that? And since we don't marry and start families at 13 anymore, why doesn't God help our bodies evolve so we don't start until we're 20? That would solve a lot of problems, although I guess it would take away the biggest consequence for teens having sex so maybe He knows what He's doing. Unlike Margaret, I pleaded with God to delay the whole thing. No such luck. Although I started a year later than Margaret, I was still one of the first of my friends. Boo. And then later on I started getting two a month. Lucky me. But I remember being 11, when I first read this book, and being terrified of the whole thing and really wishing their was a way to stop it, especially because I didn't want to have kids anyway. It seems a bit pointless for me to have to deal with this, but that's just life. But while Margaret didn't make me want to become a woman in that way, she did teach me that most of my friends did, and helped me to understand them better, and not to hold that against them. And she prepared me for the big event happening, although when it came I was confused about the lack of the belt Margaret used. I'm still not sure how that worked exactly. It seems like a lot changed in that area between 1970 and 1993. After reading the collection of essays, I re-read my very battered copy of Margaret and was surprised at how much of it focuses on religion this time around. Despite the title, I didn't really remember all of that part, with Margaret being raised to not be anything, her exploring Christianity and Judaism. It's interesting how many layers are in Blume's books.

After Margaret, I moved on to Deenie (shocking!), Iggie's House, Tiger Eyes, and finally, Forever.... Was this really Judy Blume? I had no idea this was The Sex Book before I picked it up at the library. I was shocked from the very first sentence, and continued that shock until the end. I probably missed a lot since I was 11 at the time and even though I had had the sex talk in general terms, there was a lot I didn't understand. Which is probably good since I was 11! I haven't read the book since then, so I stopped at Half-Price Books to grab a copy. I picked up a few other similar young adult books, since I'm trying to write a book for young adults that would fall into that same sort of grouping. Hopefully the books I picked up will inspire me to finish it, and help me with the dialogue becuase that's the hardest part for me.

I realized I haven't actually talked about the actual book I'm reviewing! I honestly enjoyed every essay. There were maybe three that I would say are just okay, probably because I didn't identify with them as much, but all of the others showed me a reflection of myself. It was wonderful to picture all of these different women growing with Judy, that we all shared part of the coming of age experience. So, for every girl who grew up with Judy, I highly recommend this book. And, make sure to share your favorite Judy Blume book in the comments!

NYC Reading

2010-05-17T22:25:00.000-05:00

My huge work event and trip to Scranton, PA, and NYC is now over! We hosted the big work-related event in Scranton (our office there won a contest, and we connected the event to The Office and had one of the actors from the show be the emcee), and then I attended a conference in NYC. Thus I'm a bit behind in my reading and blogging. And less important things like laundry, grocery shopping, and house cleaning. I did do some reading while I was away and decided to do a summary post. I also need to write posts of a few books I finished before I left, but I decided to start with the summary to hopefully help get back in thr groove, and to feel like I'm less behind.

That's my husband Ryan and me in Central Park. He flew up and joined me over the weekend. Since we were traveling to NYC, I did some NYC-related reading. I started off by re-reading Shopaholic Takes Manhattan by Sophie Kinsella. I figured it would have some good shopping suggestions. I should have remembered that it is written by a Londoner, not a New Yorker though, and so the NYC descriptions were actually very negligible. Oh well. It did get me prepared for walking down Fifth Avenue and it was a nice read while I was still in Scranton and was exhausted from work. I do find the whole Shopaholic series fun, light, and enjoyable though.

Next it was on to re-reading The Cricket in Times Square, hence the photo of Times Square. The Crowne Plaza you can see on the front right of the photo is where we stayed. Pretty nice! I enjoyed this re-read, although I have to say I don't love this book for itself. The reason I read it the first time was because it was Charlotte Johanssen's favorite book, and she was the favorite charge of my favorite baby-sitter in the Baby-Sitters Club books. And Stacey McGill was my main reason for wanting to see NYC at all. That should probably be really sad for a 28-year-old, but I'm actually a bit proud of my still all-encompassing love for the BSC. I made a point to go to Bloomie's and eat at the Hard Rock for Stacey.

Next comes a triumvirate of NYC travel guides: Lonely Planet - NYC Guide, National Geographic New York, and The Complete Idiot's Guide to NYC. If you know surprising very little about NYC, The Complete Idiot's Guide to NYC is a great place to start. It always confused me how there's NYC, but then the buroughs, and this explained simple things like that for me. It also had a good overview on how the streets run and highlights of NYC. Then it talked more about planning a trip rather than what to do when you get there. This is more of a read before you go, check it out from the library kind of book.

Next up was Lonely Planet - NYC Guide, which I think was the best of the three overall. It expects you to already of a bit of a basic understanding of NYC, which I know did from the other book. It had great maps, and I was able to basically memorize the map of Manhattan and didn't need to carry this around with me and look like a tourist, which was nice (although I'm sure I looked like a tourist in other ways, my lack of skinny jeans, which seemed to be part of some dress code, being the first clue). It has a TON of stuff packed into this book, with lots of info about the boroughs outside of Manhattan, which tended to get overlooked a bit in the other two. But, the informatio on each item was very short, just 1-2 sentences, so you had to look elsewhere if you saw something you weren't sure about.

Finally, the National Geographic New York book had a lot more details. It would have 1-2 pages about an entry, and had a lot of glossy photos. But, it doesn't cover as much as the Lonely Planet since it goes into more depth on each item. But, the sight-seeing portion of my trip was rather short, so this hit most of what I wanted to see anyway, and worked well for me. It would probably be a good book if you're thinking about a trip to NYC but aren't sure yet, and the Lonely Planet book is a better guide for planning out iternaries.

And finally, while I was in NYC I couldn't resist a trip to The Strand, home of 18 miles of books, a pretty impressive feat in Manhattan. I picked up The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar. The cover looked fun and the story, about a group of Scottish fairies who come to NYC, sounded intriguing. However, I should have paid more attention to the fact that the introduction was by Neil Gaiman, whose The Graveyard Book just disappointed me. And this book followed suit. It was a bit vulgar in unnecessary ways, like a brother and sister fairy having sex because that doesn't matter to fairies, and a phone sex infomercial constantly playing in the background. Those elements were distracting. I also felt like the writing was very strong, and I got a bit bored with the story. I'm glad a picked up two NYC-themed books there so I can keep the other one as a souvenier and sell this one to Half Price Books. However, since I clearly missed the appeal of Gaiman (although I could at least recognize his lyrical writing style), if you're a fan of his you might enjoy this book.

What about you? Do you have any travel guides you prefer? What book related stories do you like about NYC?

Unclutter Your Life in One Week

2010-05-03T12:49:00.002-05:00

I’m reading/skimming several books on organization and time management for a project at work. One that I read all the way through and loved was Unclutter Your Life in One Week by Erin Rooney Doland. The subtitle is “ A 7-Day Plan to Organize Your Home, Your Office, and Your Life!” And it does just that!

I really liked how this book mixed organizing your work and your home in one book. Usually you have to read one book on organizing at work and then one on organizing your home, so it was nice to have an all-in-one type of book. She also cuts through the clutter in her writing and gets straight to the action items. She provides simple, easy to follow steps to uncluttering your life. And she makes it seem like it won’t take too long and gets you motivated to get started, although I haven’t had time to do as much from the book as I would like due to various things going on at work and home and getting ready for a business trip.

I did get my kitchen completely clean and organized, although that was partly due to the fact that we had an ant infestation this week. We’re re-landscaping our front yard and our lawn guy took out all of the flower beds in the front. Even though we have a pest control company come every two months to spray, we had ants make a break for it and head inside. After they came and sprayed again, I took everything out of the kitchen, scrubbed everything down (even the walls!) and then put everything back up. Yuck. To make matters worse, our lawn guy found signs of termites when he was cleaning out the flower beds, and so the pest control company investigated and determined we do have termites and will have to treat that as well. Apparently 70% of homes in Oklahoma and most of the surrounding states get them at some point and there’s not much you can do to prevent it, but it makes me feel like my whole house is gross. I will definitely be implementing the rest of the at home suggestions from the book as soon as I get back from my upcoming trip.

Sorry to get off topic a bit there. Some of the topics covered in the book are things like organizing your files and e-mail, cleaning closets, creating a chore schedule (and I loved that she made that Monday through Friday, no cleaning on the weekends!), tracking productivity, running meetings, cleaning your kitchen and bathrooms, and she included spring and fall cleaning tips. I checked this book out from the library, but it’s one I wish I owned so I could keep referring to it. There are about 50 little yellow sticky tabs throughout the book where I marked things I liked or want to do.

So, if you’re looking for a good book on getting more organized, this is a great choice! She also has a website, unclutter.com. Do you have any getting organized books or resources you enjoy?

The Three Musketeers

2010-04-26T19:28:00.004-05:00

It's time to welcome The Classics Circuit back to my blog! This time we have Alexandre Dumas joining us. The first thing I have to say about The Three Musketeers is that it was actually a really easy read. The language wasn't difficult and there's a lot of action. But although I definitely enjoyed it and didn't get bored, I found myself reading really, really slowly. I'm not sure why that was. I think part of it might be that there was so much going on, and so many characters, that I read very carefully and that slowed me down. Not that I don't normally read carefully, but there's usually not that much to keep track off, and I had to keep making sure I kept Athos, Porthos, and Aramis straight. I adored D'Artagnon though (Although it kept making me think of this guy I went to high school with who was named after him - D'Artagnon Everett Dean Burns. It goes from French to hick real fast when you say that with a southern accent!)
I really enjoyed the adventures though, and I was surprised at some of the killings and stabbings that the musketeers and D'Artagnon jumped at every chance to start. There was also a reference to lesbians that surprised me!
I loved Don Quixote, and I was kind of hoping that The Three Musketeers would be somewhat similar, although with a stronger hero of course. So I thought it was awesome that Dumas refers to Don Quixote on the first page! I think that set me up to really enjoy the book, and take it for the fun, frothy, adventurous story that it is. I think that more English teachers should use this book, although it is really long. But I think it would interest more boys in reading since it's so clearly a boy book, while still be entertaining to the girls. It's also an accessible classic, although a post Jenny made over at Shelf Love made me wonder about that.
Jenny wrote a post about translations, and whether translators should modernize the language or stick closely to the original and what liberties they can take with the overall style. I've thought about translations before when reading Greek or Russian literature, but her post made me realize I've never once thought about that with French works! I think I just assumed that they wrote in English! I have no idea why I had never thought of that before, especially because I love Voltaire and I just read Zola and was reading Dumas. So I picked up my Oxford World's Classics edition of The Three Musketeers, and noticed that the translator is barely acknowledged. With the Greeks, it's usually plastered all over the place, probably because the translator also wrote the intro. But here it was buried in the last part of the introduction. William Barrow translated it in 1846, so I'm impressed the language was still very easy to read, although I do read a lot of Dickens who wrote at the same time so maybe I'm biased on that. According to Wikipedia, Barrow is pretty faithful to the original, except he toned down the sexuality to conform with Victorian standards. I'm surprised that lesbian reference still worked it's way in! But apparently the D'Artagnon and Milady scenes were a bit steamier in the original French. Although the Barrows translation was the standard for years, now a version by Richard Pevear in 2006 is considered standard, and he believes that the Barrows edition is an example of bad translation screwing up the author's work. So, if you'd like the steamier, more recent edition, check out the Pevear one. Maybe someday I'll read it to and see which was better. Anyway, thank you to Jenny for making me think more about translations!

The Graveyard Book

2010-04-24T22:29:00.005-05:00

The blogosphere is a bit obsessed with Neil Gaiman. I've read so many glowing reviews, and although I haven't seen Coraline, it looks like it has a Tim Burton-esque feel, which I love. So, I decided to read The Graveyard Book and expected to love it. And I did end up enjoying it, but something was just a bit off for me. Maybe it was just timing. I've been stressed at work, am preparing to be out of the office for nearly two weeks, am dealing with learning I have termites in my house (which are extremely common in Oklahoma and the surrounding states, but is still disturbing, and extremely expensive to get rid off), and having plumbing issues in our master bathroom. So I was a bit distracted.

There was a lot to like about the book. The writing is beautiful. You can tell Gaiman works at carefully crafting each sentence. It has an interesting plot, with a mystery to solve. It had a unique story. And I love books like Harry Potter and the Series of Unfortunate Events series.

And yet, every time I set the book down, I had to force myself to pick it back up. While reading, I would be interested in what happens next, but if I took a break I would completely stop caring, and it felt like a chore to pick it back up again. So my reading experience fell a little short of my expectations. Again, that may have more to do with my week than the book though.

Since I was hoping Gaiman would give me a Harry Potter-like fix and didn't, does anyone have any book recommendations to help feel that void?

4-for-1 Update

2010-04-21T22:09:00.002-05:00

Whew! I guess after the readathon last weekend I decided to take a mini blogging break. I did read a few books last week, but then my husband and I took a long weekend trip up to Tulsa this weekend so I'm trying to play catch up now. The trip to Tulsa was fun. We stayed at a cute little boutique hotel, went shopping, went to a museum and to an aquarium, and had a lot of fun at Dave and Busters. Between that and the NHL playoffs starting though, other things have fallen by the wayside a bit. So I'm going to do a quick update on the books I read last week and call it good!

First up is Big Boned by Meg Cabot. I actually finished this during the readathon. I've written about Cabot's books before and don't really have anything new to say. I really enjoy them, and they always make me laugh. This one is a sequel to Size 12 Isn't Fat, which I read last year. It features former pop star Heather Wells, who currently works in a college dorm, solving a mystery. It's a fun, light-hearted read.

Next up is Club Dead by Charlaine Harris. I have enjoyed the Sookie Stackhouse books so far, but this one ended on a really sour note and I'm pretty sure I won't continue reading these. At the end of the book, Bill rapes Sookie after he's been tortured and is out of it and doesn't realize it's her. Now, I get that they're showing him as a vampire, a "real" vampire, not a "sparkly" one, but I expected to see Sookie having to see if she can get past it and try to deal with it. Instead, it's glossed over, and she breaks up with him because he was cheating on her, with no mention of the rape. She's never shown dealing with it in anyway. Now, maybe she does that in the next book, but it would be logical for her to at least reflect on it briefly in this one when she decides to call it quits with him. Perhaps I'm overreacting, but it just bothered me and I don't think I want to keep investing in reading these if I'm going to hold that against Sookie for the rest of the series.

The next book I read was We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. The only thing by Jackson that I had read before was The Lottery. I enjoyed the story of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and I read it very quickly to find out what happened next, which is a good sign. But, I didn't really like something about the writing style. Maybe it's just that I'm not used to reading short books, but it seemed somewhat unfinished. Not the ending, but the writing throughout. For example, I was unclear on the main characters ages until fairly late in the book. And just the details overall seemed fuzzy, like Jackson wrote an outline and then just filled in sentences and left it at that. That kept bothering me, although like I said I still read it quickly and wanted to know what happened, so I still enjoyed it.

And finally, I read Love the One You're With by Emily Giffin. I was excited the main character was from Pittsburgh, where my favorite hockey team is from! And then much of the rest of it is set in NYC, where I'm going in a few weeks, and some is set in Atlanta, specifically in Buckhead, where I've gone for conferences before, so it was fun to idetify with all of the settings. I've loved all of Giffin's books, and this was no exception. It explores what happens when the one who got away comes back into your life a few months into your marriage. Giffin did a great job of showing that situation without making the main character seem stupid or evil. Ellen remains likeable throughout the book, and it's not a clear choice between the two guys either, making the anticipation over her decision that much better. And the description of life in Buckhead cracked me up. When I was there for a conference, there was a wedding shower at the hotel I staying at. I said a wedding shower, not a wedding mind you. All of the guests arrived in formals! I'm talking full-out tuxes for the guys, formal long evening gowns for the girls. In the middle of the afternoon. For a wedding shower. I hate to think about what the actual wedding was like! And there were at least 150 people there. It was completely insane. I've never even been to a wedding that formal, much less a shower! I kept reliving that over and over again as she described Buckhead society. Now, I like Atlanta, don't get me wrong, and clearly not everyone there lives in that manner, but that aspect is clearly there. I definitely recommend this book as a fun read! On a side note, I saw that Giffin's books Something Borrowed and Something Blue are being made into a movi starring Ginnifer Goodwin, Kate Hudson, Colin Egglesfield, and John Krasinski. I'm so excited! I like those actresses, and I loved Colin when he was on All My Children, and I'm excited he got a lead role in such a big movie! And he's definitely easy on the eyes and it would be easy to see how two women end up fighting over him.

Most Hated Mini-Challenge!

2010-04-11T03:50:00.001-05:00

Hello! Welcome to the Most Hated Mini-Challenge! No, it's not the mini-challenge that you hate the most, but one about your most hated characters. I figured by this time in the readathon, if you're actually still awake and participating, you're probably hating the readathon right now. And the organizers. And those perky cheerleaders. And yourself for signing up. So, let's channel that into hating a fictional character, then you can get back to remembering why you signed up - to read!

Here's what you need to do. Create a post on your blog about your most hated character from a book. Maybe they're evil, maybe they're just annoying, or maybe they remind you of your ex. Whatever the reason, just pick someone and then write a post that shares who they are, what book they're from and the author, and why you hate them. Then come back here and sign and Mr. Linky, and make sure to leave a comment!

You've got three hours to complete this mini-challenge, which takes us through the end of the readathon! (hours 22-24; 4 a.m. to 7 a.m. central) The winner will receive a $10 Amazon.com gift card via e-mail. I will select the answer I like best.

Readathon Update Number 6

2010-04-11T00:10:00.002-05:00

Happy 24-hour readathon day! I think this is my last update for the day, although I will host the Most Hated Mini-Challenge here at 4:00 central time, so happy reading and commenting!

Title of book(s) read since last update:
Imitations of Austen by Jane Greensmith and Club Dead by Charlaine Harris

Number of books read since you started: 3 (The Ladies' Paradise, Herland, and Big Boned) and parts of 2 others

Pages read since last update: 70

Running total of pages read since you started: 790

Amount of time spent reading since last update: 34 minutes

Running total of time spent reading since you started: 450 minutes = 7 1/2 hours

Mini-challenges completed: Kick off champions
And the nominees are...
Pantyworthy mini-challenge
Where in the world are you reading?
Soundtrack song mini-challenge
Bookish Movies
Get the Heck Out of Here

Other participants you’ve visited:
http://aliteraryodyssey.blogspot.com/
http://luvviesmusings.blogspot.com/http://tilwereadagain.blogspot.com
http://virginiebarbeau.wordpress.com
http://myfavoritest.blogspot.com/
http://fyreflybooks.wordpress.com/
http://athyrium.blogspot.com/
http://ponderingthelibrary.blogspot.com/2010/04/read-thon.html
http://annotatedreading.blogspot.com/
http://nomadreader.blogspot.com
http://thelostentwife.net

Prize you’ve won: Fot the Dewey comment post for hour 17 I won a Lionel Shriver prize pack with two books! Yeah!

Get the Heck Out of Here Mini-Challenge

2010-04-10T23:22:00.003-05:00

The Literate Housewife is hosting a Get the Heck out of Here mini-challenge.

The Questions:

1.What steps did you take to ensure you’d be able to read as much as possible today? I created a TBR pile and cleaned up my reading area last night, and made sure I didn't have anything planned for today. And then my husband got the day off. He usually works on Saturdays. So he's been a bit distracting, but I love him! :) I also made sure my TBR pile had a lot of variety, including short stories and easier reads.
2.Of those steps, which proved to be the most beneficial to your day? having a clear TBR pile that wasn't too full, so I had choices but not so many that I spent too much time deciding what to read. And telling my husband I would really be reading all day, not just reading most of the day like normal.
3.Is there anything you might do differently next time? I might sit up camp in another room if my husband is home. I would also prepare some of my blog posts early by setting up posts for updates throughout the day so I only have to edit them with the updates numbers, etc. I also think I've gotten distracted by the mini-challenges. Like right now. Ooops. But that is a really, really awesome prize!

Title Teasers Mini-Challenge

2010-04-10T22:23:00.003-05:00

Write for a Reader is hosting a mini-challenge of fill-in-the-blank title teasers. Here are my answers!

The Dark Divine
An Irish Country Girl
The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott
Necessary Heartbreak
She's So Dead to Us
Fireworks Over Toccoa
Club Dead
Scones & Sensibility
All Unquiet Things
Beautiful Creatures
Perchance to Dream
The Dead-Tossed Waves
I Kissed a Zombie and I Liked It
Prophecy of the Sisters
Very LeFreak
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
Marriage and Other Acts of Charity
Making Toast
White Cat
Letters to My Father

Readathon update number 5

2010-04-10T22:16:00.001-05:00

Happy 24-hour readathon day! Here's my fifth update for the day!

Title of book(s) read since last update:
Big Boned by Meg Cabot

Number of books read since you started: 3 (The Ladies' Paradise, Herland, and Big Boned) and part of 1 other one

Pages read since last update: 179

Running total of pages read since you started: 720

Amount of time spent reading since last update: 70 minutes

Running total of time spent reading since you started: 416 minutes = 6 hours and 56 minutes

Mini-challenges completed: Kick off champions
And the nominees are...
Pantyworthy mini-challenge
Where in the world are you reading?
Soundtrack song mini-challenge
Bookish Movies

Other participants you’ve visited:
http://aliteraryodyssey.blogspot.com/
http://luvviesmusings.blogspot.com/http://tilwereadagain.blogspot.com
http://virginiebarbeau.wordpress.com
http://myfavoritest.blogspot.com/
http://fyreflybooks.wordpress.com/
http://athyrium.blogspot.com/
http://ponderingthelibrary.blogspot.com/2010/04/read-thon.html
http://annotatedreading.blogspot.com/
http://nomadreader.blogspot.com
http://thelostentwife.net

Prize you’ve won: none

Romancing your friendship challenge

2010-04-10T20:30:00.002-05:00

Star Shadow is hosting a Romancing Your Friendship mini-challenge. My favorite friends than romance couple is Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley from the Harry Potter series. I love how they evolve over the series and end up falling in love by the end. I was so glad that they didn't do a Harry/Hermione relationship. It was nice for the side kick to end up with the main girl, and they work really well together.

And wow! Here's a pic of the actors from the movies. Ron's making a move!

Bookish Movies Mini-challenge

2010-04-10T20:12:00.002-05:00

The Lost Entwife is hosting a mini-challenge on what book we'd like to see made into a movie and then cast a character. THe first one that springs to mind is Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. I just finished it this week and really enjoyed it. I think it would make a good, although creepy, movie.

I think Emily Blunt would work really well as the main characters, twins Julia and Valentina. She's dainty enough to play them and is a strong enough actress to play the dual role, including playing the two very different personalities.

The Ladies' Paradise

2010-04-10T18:24:00.000-05:00

Whether you're visiting my blog for the 24-hour readathon or from the Classics Circuit, or just because you like me, welcome!

The current tour on the Classics Circuit is for Emile Zola. I've owned The Ladies' Paradise for a while, and had started reading it about a year ago. I was only about 15 pages in when I realized it was part of a series, so I put it aside to get the earlier books in the series and read them first. Then I learned that some of the series is only available in French. Oops. So, when Zola came up on the Circuit, I decided to dust off The Ladies' Paradise and dive in.

Overall, The Ladies' Paradise doesn't feel like a novel. The main character is really the store, The Ladies' Paradise, and it's more about business, marketing, and consumerism than about the actual characters and plot. Normally that would drive me crazy, but it didn't here. It's definitely not going to make my list of favorite books, but I still enjoyed it. It surprised me that this was written in 1883. The business world descriptions were oddly accurate for today as well.

It's a revolutionary time for business. Stores have started placing pricing signs in the windows, increasing competition. Large stories like The Ladies' Paradise now have departments selling different items instead of each store only selling one type of item. Before then, there were umbrella stores, dress stores, silk stores, etc. Now, one giant store could sell all of these items, and grow to have over 3,000 salespeople and make a million francs in one day. (See my entry in the book score/soundtrack mini-challenge for the readathon for a comparison between this and Empire Records.)

The story is about Mouret, the owner of The Ladies' Paradise. He sees the opportunity to exploit women and market to them to make tons of money in his story. There is one girl, Denise, who becomes a salesperson in his shop that refuses to give into the consumerism and be bought by him, and he falls in love with her. And her transformation from a frail girl unable to stand up for herself to someone who can control the shots was interesting, but the story is less about Mouret and Denise than consumerism itself.

I don't know if it's just because I'm in marketing myself that I paid more attention to that aspect of the novel, or if it was just really prevalent anyway, but that's what I focused on. The focus on women is definitely there though: "Of supreme importance...was the exploitation of Woman...it was Woman they were continually snaring with their bargains...They had awoken new desires in her weak flesh." And on, and on. It doesn't paint a very flattering picture of women. It portrays them as easy to tempt by saying something is on sale, by filling the store with baubles and shiny things, by saying it's the latest fashion, by having sales reps there to greet and sell to each customer individually. The whole thing is extremely insulting, but at the same time it's rather true. Even when I worked in the men's department in J.C. Penney's in high school, it was the women who bought 90% of the stuff. And sometimes something like Dockers would be on sale for like $2 off, but the sale sign convinced them all they were getting a great bargain. And how many women do you know that have to buy the latest fashions just because it's the trend, and heaven forbid they aren't trendy?

I think I found this book fascinating because in high school I was someone who focused on fashion, and even though I didn't like being trendy exactly, I was still obsessed with clothes and shopping. Now you have to practically drag me to a mall, and if someone told me I was trendy I might just punch them in the face. I think focusing on being trendy just makes you look unintelligent (although going to far in the other direction can be just as bad). It looks like you don't know who you are and are just doing what you think you're supposed to be doing, demonstrating low self-esteem. What's interesting to me is that this seems to now be a plague among the boys in America and not just the girls. Last night I went to the mall with my husband for the first time in about 18 months. What is wrong with teenage boys these days? They look like idiots, and the look girly! They all have skinny pants and pink and purple tops, which I noticed is what was also on all the mannequins. And their hair, ugh. I don't mind long hair, my dad actually usually has long hair, but what's with the weird long in front, elf-like haircuts? I'm really glad I'm not a teenager these days. I would not be dating.

Sorry for the tangent. One more thing I thought was interesting. Mouret arranges his story so that you have to walk across the most floor space as possible to reach departments that you might shop together. For instance, ladies shoes and dresses may be a mile apart, with accessories in between to tempt you along the way. That way you aren't like to just walk in and make your purchase and leave. He also rearranges the store to keep people confused. I think Dillard's is on to that strategy. My mom and grandma always talk about how they have a different layout every time they go. Maybe that's why. Interesting. It also talked about marketing to the children, having tempting items for them that the parents can't say no too. We tend to talk about this being a recent issue, so I thought that was fascinating that Zola wrote about that over 100 years ago.

Well, I'm off to get back to reading for the readathon!

Mid-event survey

2010-04-10T18:07:00.002-05:00

Mid-Event Survey:
1. What are you reading right now? Big Boned by Meg Cabot
2. How many books have you read so far? Finished 2
3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon? Portuguese Irregular Verbs
4. Did you have to make any special arrangements to free up your whole day? I tried to, but husband's off work so it's a little difficult!
5. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those? Tell my husband nicely that I'm trying to read!
6. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far? How much time blogging takes.
7. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? Maybe updates every two hours?
8. What would you do differently, as a Reader or a Cheerleader, if you were to do this again next year? Make my husband go to work. :)
9. Are you getting tired yet? No. I read a lot most Saturdays.
10. Do you have any tips for other Readers or Cheerleaders, something you think is working well for you that others may not have discovered? Pick a comfortable chair and stretch every once in a while.
Sign the linky below with a link to your post with your answers. There will be 4 winners: 1st gets 1 prize packs of books, along with chocolate coins, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th get three books of their choice. This is only open until the beginning of Hour 14.

Readathon update number 4

2010-04-10T17:45:00.004-05:00

Happy 24-hour readathon day! Here's my fourth update for the day!

Title of book(s) read since last update:
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Big Boned by Meg Cabot

Number of books read since you started: 2 (The Ladies' Paradise and Herland) and parts of 2

Pages read since last update: 140

Running total of pages read since you started: 541

Amount of time spent reading since last update: 100 minutes

Running total of time spent reading since you started: 346 minutes = 5 hours and 6 minutes

Mini-challenges completed: Kick off champions
And the nominees are...
Pantyworthy mini-challenge
Where in the world are you reading?
Soundtrack song mini-challenge

Other participants you’ve visited:
http://aliteraryodyssey.blogspot.com/
http://luvviesmusings.blogspot.com/http://tilwereadagain.blogspot.com
http://virginiebarbeau.wordpress.com
http://myfavoritest.blogspot.com/
http://fyreflybooks.wordpress.com/
http://athyrium.blogspot.com/
http://ponderingthelibrary.blogspot.com/2010/04/read-thon.html
http://annotatedreading.blogspot.com/
http://nomadreader.blogspot.com

Prize you’ve won: none

Herland

2010-04-10T17:24:00.004-05:00

I finished book number two for the readathon - Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. I had heard about this book in college when we read The Yellow Wallpaper in a class, but hadn't read it. A few months ago Rebecca at Rebecca Readshad a giveaway, and I won a copy. Thanks Rebecca!

Herland is about a land where only women live. They can reproduce asexually, and haven't had men in their society for 2,000 years. For the story, three men discover this land and assume that is must be awful because women can't run anything, that there must actually be men somewhere, and that they'll have a grand old time with that many women to conquer. She wrote the book in 1915, so that was still the belief of most of the world.

Of course, the women's world is portrayed as a utopian society where all is peaceful and wonderful. What surprised me was that their society so celebrated motherhood above all else, and that seemed to be their reason for living. I found it odd that Perkins Gilman visualized even this utopian society that way since she did not seem to enjoy motherhood herself. After she and her husband separated and he remarried, she willingly sent her daughter to them. So this worshipping of motherhood just seemed really odd.

I think that aspect is part of what prevented me from really enjoying the book. As someone who does not want to have children, I hate things that focus on how the point of everything is to have kids. I didn't expect to love this book since I personally don't think an all-woman society would be a pleasant thing. I have to agree with a bit of the men in the book's preconception of the society, that the women would fight all the time. Maybe if men weren't in the picture women wouldn't tend to be so jealous of each other and so mean, but I don't know. I mean, when I was dating this one guy in high school, I had several different girls threaten me if I didn't break up with him. Again, maybe that wouldn't happen without men around, but it just seems like there would still be something to fight about. And I prefer anti-utopian novels to utopian ones. They seem much more realistic. I guess I'm a pessimist.

I am glad I read this book though, I did think it was interesting and it does you make think, and it does make me appreciative of the fact that I can have a great career, could easily support myself if I wasn't married, and can choose not to have kids if I don't want to.

Pantyworthy mini-challenge

2010-04-10T15:21:00.002-05:00

Well, this is a challenge you don't see everyday! The Book Lady's Blog is hosting a pantyworthy mini-challenge. I decided to write about Darin Strauss, author of Chang and Eng, which I gushed about here. I LOVED Chang and Eng and couldn't stop talking about it. Then I looked at Strauss's website and realized that in addition to being a great writer, he's rather attractive. You can also check him out here. He's also married with twin boys (how funny is that?). I have to say, you don't see a lot of good looking male writers these days.

I have to share something fun for this post - Strauss actually e-mailed me this week because he read my post on Chang and Eng! How crazy fun is that?

Readathon update 3

2010-04-10T13:55:00.003-05:00

Happy 24-hour readathon day! Here's my third update for the day! I took a break in between my last update to eat lunch with Ryan and watch an episode of Mythbusters.

Title of book(s) read since last update:
The Ladies' Paradise by Emile Zola

Number of books read since you started: 1 (The Ladies' Paradise) and parts of 3

Pages read since last update: 162

Running total of pages read since you started: 401

Amount of time spent reading since last update: 90 minutes

Running total of time spent reading since you started: 246 minutes = 4 hours and 6 minutes

Mini-challenges completed: Kick off champions
And the nominees are...

Other participants you’ve visited:
http://aliteraryodyssey.blogspot.com/
http://luvviesmusings.blogspot.com/http://tilwereadagain.blogspot.com
http://virginiebarbeau.wordpress.com
http://myfavoritest.blogspot.com/
http://fyreflybooks.wordpress.com/
http://athyrium.blogspot.com/
http://ponderingthelibrary.blogspot.com/2010/04/read-thon.html
http://annotatedreading.blogspot.com/

Prize you’ve won: none

Book score/soundtrack mini-challenge

2010-04-10T11:18:00.002-05:00

I Just Wanna Sit Here and Read is hosting a mini-challenge on book score/soundtracks! I'm currently reading The Ladies' Paradise by Emile Zola. I think the perfect soundtrack for this book is Money (That's What I Want).

Here's a video clip of it in my favorite movie, Empire Records:

The Ladies' Paradise is about shopping and the growth of the department store in Paris in the nineteenth century. The last chapter I read featured a huge sale where a half a million francs of items were sold in one day. So, this song seems quite appropriate. Actually, the fact that I used the clip from Empire Records is even more appropriate, but both the movie and the book are about the little shops trying to take on the big guys. That's kind of funny. Look for my full post on The Ladies' Paradise to come soon!

And the nominees are...

2010-04-10T11:06:00.002-05:00

Here's my second mini-challenge to enter for the readathon! And the nominees are..., hosted by 'Til We Read Again. I am answering quickly to get back to reading, so these are off the top of my head answers!

Favorite Female Character in a book: Hermione Granger - Harry Potter
Favorite Male Character in a book: Gulliver - Gulliver's Travels
Favorite Side Kick in a book: Ron Weasley - Harry Potter
Favorite Couple in a Book: Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy - Pride and Prejudice
Favorite Book Series: Harry Potter!
Favorite Author: Jane Austen
Favorite Book Cover: Out of my stack for potential reading for today...White is for Witching
Favorite Book of 2009: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley (I'm not sure if it came out in 2009, but that's when I read it, so I'm counting it.)

Kick off of champions mini-challenge

2010-04-10T09:38:00.002-05:00

Yeah! My first mini-challenge for the readathon! It's hosted by Miss Remmers' Review. To start off my first readathon, I've surrounded myself with books (obviously), opened the blinds by my reading chair, grabbed a Diet Mountain Dew, my laptop, my Snuggie (I know they're kind of goofy but every big reader should have one! My arms can be warm and snuggly and I can still read!), and my cats. I just took some pictures, but realized I have no idea where the camera cord is to upload them. Doh! At least getting up to get the camera got the blood moving a bit. I will try to post the pics later even though this challenge will be over. Happy reading everyone!

24-hour readathon update 2

2010-04-10T09:37:00.003-05:00

Happy 24-hour readathon day! Here's my second update for the day!

Title of book(s) read since last update:
The Ladies' Paradise by Emile Zola (I should have already finished this one for my Classics Circuit post today...I'll finish it soon and post by early afternoon!

Number of books read since you started: Parts of 4

Pages read since last update: 104

Running total of pages read since you started: 239

Amount of time spent reading since last update: 54 minutes

Running total of time spent reading since you started: 2 hours and 36 minutes

Mini-challenges completed: Kick off champions
And the nominees are...

Other participants you’ve visited:
http://aliteraryodyssey.blogspot.com/
http://luvviesmusings.blogspot.com/http://tilwereadagain.blogspot.com
http://virginiebarbeau.wordpress.com

Prize you’ve won: none

24-hour readathon

2010-04-10T09:24:00.003-05:00

I woke up a little late this morning and so I launched right into reading and am just getting my first 24-hour readathon update posted. I was about 40 minutes late starting. Boo.

Title of book(s) read since last update:
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Big Boned by Meg Cabot
Club Dead by Charlaine Harris

Number of books read since you started: 0

Pages read since last update: 135

Running total of pages read since you started: 135

Amount of time spent reading since last update: 1 hour and 40 minutes.

Running total of time spent reading since you started: 1 hour and 40 minutes.

Mini-challenges completed: none (I'm about to do that though!)

Other participants you’ve visited: none (I'm about to do that though!)

Prize you’ve won: none

Her Fearful Symmetry

2010-04-04T20:21:00.002-05:00

I chose an oddly appropriate book for Easter weekend - Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. It's got quite a bit to do with death and resurrection. I bought this when it first came out because I LOVE The Time Traveler's Wife, but it was not well reviewed and was so criticized that I was afraid of disappointment and put it off for a while. I think putting distance between the reviews and the actual reading paid off, and my still somewhat lowered expectations made me realize this probably wouldn't be as good as as The Time Traveler's Wife.

However, I actually really liked it! It's very weird, which might have something to do with the negative reviews, but really, The Time Traveler's Wife isn't exactly normal either. But, it doesn't focus on a cemetery and death and ghosts like Her Fearful Symmetry does. I don't usually enjoy ghost stories, but this was very well done. I think overall it was extremely well written, with a whole cast of interesting characters who I came to care about, a mystery I wanted to unravel, and a plot I wanted to unwrap like a candy bar - slowly at first, savoring the anticipation, then quickly ripping through the package to get to the end.

Her Fearful Symmetry is a love story, a truly unique love story, and actually several love stories packaged together. Elspeth and Robert. Edie and Jack. Valentina and Julia. Martin and Marijke. All of the characters have their good and bad sides, and they're all intriguing. Martin has an extreme case of OCD and won't even leave his flat. Valentina and Julia are twins who can't quite seem to separate and still dress alike at 20. Elspeth is dead. (That's not a spoiler; it's on the book flap and happens in the first few pages.) Elspeth leaves her flat to Julia and Valentina, and Martin and Robert also have flats in the same building, so all of the characters are intertwined. The condition of the girls inheriting the flat and money is they must live in the flat for a year and their parents, Jack and Edie, cannot enter the flat. Why? Well, you'll just have to read it to find out.

House Rules

2010-04-03T19:51:00.000-05:00

I know some people think Jodi Picoult's books a bit formulaic, but I love them! They always rekindle my love of reading and I tend to go on a reading tear after reading one of her books. There have been a few disappoints, including Change of Heart, so I was very glad that I enjoyed her latest, House Rules.
House Rules is about a family where the older son as Asperger's, a high-functioning form of autism. I have been anticipating this book since I heard she was writing about that topic a while ago. I'm intrigued by autism and since her books are also so carefully researched I knew I would learn more about it through her book. I think my interest in the topic goes back to elementary school when I read Kristy and the Secret of Susan, one of the Baby-Sitters Club books. I think it was the first time I'd really read about someone with a disability, and we had a special elementary school in my district for kids with disabilities, so I had never met someone with one at that point in my life. I found Susan's abilities amazing and wondered how the brain could work that way, and the trade off her being stuck in her own mind.
Jacob, who has Asperger's is able to interact in ways that Susan couldn't, so that he can seem almost "normal" some of the time. This mix of not being clearly autistic but not functioning like a typical person is the crux of the book. A woman is dead, and Jacob is suspecting of her murder. His Asperger's causes him to act guilty, but is he? And if he is, is he reponsible for his actions? I enjoyed the mystery aspect of trying to discover if he did it or not, and even though I guessed early on what happened, since Picoult is known to through in twists I couldn't be sure if I was right until the end. Every time I put the book down, I couldn't wait to get back to it and find out what happened.
I don't think it has been very well reviewed, but I really liked it and would recommend it, and especially thought it was stronger than Change of Heart, which is probably one of my least favorites of her books. I also liked that is wasn't depressingly sad like some of her other books. I do think the reviewers are right in that she focused more on research of the legal and medical aspects of the stories, but I actually felt that worked well since Jacob is the focus and he focuses on those things, not the emotional elements. And she still did a good job of creating different perspectives and having the voices sound different, especially Jacob's. So overall, I think it was a great book!

Nanny Returns

2010-04-03T19:28:00.000-05:00

Just once I would like to see a character who asks "should I have kids or shouldn't I?" answer with a "no." I think I may have to write my own book to get this ending. Unless anyone has any book suggestions for me?

That is not the main plot point in Nanny Returns, but it did bug me. It probably bothered me mainly because I was already disappointed with the book. I really enjoyed The Nanny Diaries. I thought it was funny, entertaining, and surprisingly well written for haing two authors. I usually find that even with the editing process, books with two authors have an uneven flow. I felt like that was more noticeable in Nanny Returns. It wasn't clear cut when the changes happened or anything like that, just overall it felt uneven.

Also, in this book the characters all just annoyed me so much I just wanted them all to die. While you're supposed to dislike Mrs. and Mr. X, I also disliked the children and Nan. I know Nan had no backbone until the end of the first book, but in this book it's like she reverts to having no backbone and ends up even worse because I felt like she let her husband talk her into the baby at the end. In the first book, you understood her actions because she wanted to make sure Grayer was taken care of, but this time he's an annoying 16-year-old so it's hard to see why she gets involved. When his parents dump him and his brother, why doesn't she just call the police to track them down? And how can she possibly live in a house as disgusting as the way hers is described? (It's being remodeled.)

So, I'd pass on this one. I did enjoy Dedication by the same authors, so if you want more of their style I'd go with that one instead of Nanny Returns (or Citizen Girl. That was awful.)

100 Worst Bosses

2010-04-02T21:24:00.000-05:00

So, I have been a wee bit neglectful of this dear old blog lately. This is not due to a lack of wanting to blog, but from an I've been spending way too much time at work lately and the last thing I want to do is get on the computer when I get home kind of thing. Work is going well, and I actually just had two people moved onto my team and had my role expanded, which I'm excited about, but I've been a little stressed as a result.

Also, we have a huge campaign that I'm managing at work right now and I've been frantically trying to answer phone calls and e-mails about it all day while trying to actually do the work of planning and implementing the thing! As part of the campaign, we're having a simulcast that will have over 230 event sites participating throughout the U.S. and Canada on May 5. I'm planning the content and marketing of the event, which could have 14,000 attendees. So I'm going a bit crazy at work right now.

This does have something to do with a book, and I'm getting to that. Last year, best-selling author Jim Stovall contacted my company to partner with him in writing his next book. Jim wrote The Ultimate Gift, which was made into a movie starring James Gardner and Abigail Breslin. He was working on a book called 100 Worst Bosses and wanted to work with my company to gather stories for the book. (Not because we have a lot of bad bosses at my company. :) I work for a staffing company, and we put over 350,000 people to work each year, so we have a lot of people to ask for stories about bad bosses they've had over the years.) So last year I led a campaign to collect those stories, and then we ended up with the book this year. And I got to be the ghostwriter on the foreword of the book for our CEO, which is fun. Jim will be speaking as part of the simulcast, and the whole thing is centered around some of the content of the book.

You can check out our website for the campaign at MyLeadershipInstinct.com. There are some really funny videos we created as part of the campaign that you can view on the site, and a quiz to determine your leadership instinct. Two of the videos will air on Fox News, CNN, CBC News (in Canada), Comedy Central (during the Daily Show), and Fox (during Fox News Sunday)! It's kind of crazy that I came up with an idea that's going to end up airing on national television.

So you can see why I'm a bit behind on my blogging. And why I'm not quite on track with my reading goals for the year. I'm hoping to catch up on blogging this weekend since I have finished several good books recently and to catch up on my reading during the 24-hour readathon, although I don't plan on reading the full 24 hours. I get real grumpy if I don't get enough sleep.

As for the 100 Worst Bosses, even if business books aren't your thing, it's a really great book. The stories are horrifying! You will be thankful for your boss after reading it. Unless your boss has ever thrown a stapler at you or pulled a gun on you. Or is completely wasted by noon every day. Then you might just get a little motivation to leave already! And if you've ever had a bad co-worker or employee, you can submit your story to WorstEmployees.com and get a chance to see your story in his next book and win an autographed book! And if you want more of an actual book review of the 100 Worst Bosses, you can check out the blog post on my company's leadership blog.

Oh, and for any Office fans out there, we got Andy Buckley, who plays David Wallace, Michael's ex-boss, to emcee our event! I have his cell phone number! And no you cannot have it. :) Isn't that crazy? I'm going to have to actually buck up and watch the show before the event since I'll meet him.

Living Dead in Dallas

2010-03-21T20:20:00.000-05:00

I read Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris this weekend. It's the second in the Sookie Stackhouse series, which True Blood is based on.

I honestly don't have a lot to say about it that I didn't say about the first one, Dead Until Dark. I did enjoy it, and it was great for a light Friday night/Saturday morning read. I started after watching a fantastic movie Friday night - (500) Days of Summer. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. It was a lot more artistic than most movies, but it was still entertaining, which sometimes artsy movies tend to forget about. And then I finished Living Dead in Dallas Saturday morning before we headed out to the Stone Temple Pilots concert. Which was unbelievably awesome. They played four new songs, which haven't been released to the public yet. We were just the third show that got to hear them, so that was really exciting.

And again, I promise this isn't turning into STP fan blog. I just don't have a lot to say about this book, other than I do recommend it for some fun, light reading.

Also, I tried out Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and just couldn't take it. I gave it 110 pages, more than fair, and while I think they did do a good job of writing in Austen's style, I just couldn't take the sea stuff dominating the entire story.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

2010-03-19T15:52:00.001-05:00

I am having a wonderful day off work today! I slept in, read, watched TV, read some more, and now I'm blogging. I even read outside a little bit and enjoyed the sunshine and beautiful 70+ degree weather this afternoon. And watched my cat Optimus Prime chase and "kill" leaves. After the unusually dreary winter we've had, it was nice to be outside a little bit, although in sterotypical nerdy reader fashion I have really bad allergies and hope I'm not going to pay for my hour of sunshine. I took extra medicine and showered immediately after coming inside so hopefully I'll be fine. And apparently we're getting another snowstorm tomorrow so maybe that will kill off any remaining allergens. That's one thing about living in Oklahoma - you never get bored with the weather! I do hope the snow stays in the northern part of the state though, because my husband and I are driving from OKC south to almost the Texas border for a concert tomorrow night. Stone Temple Pilots - Scott Weiland how I love thee! This will be the sixth time we've seen them in the last 18 months, and I'm hoping the play their new single that the debuted at SXSW last night.

But this blog is not about my complete obsession with Scott Weiland and company. So let's talk about the book I was reading out in the sunshine - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark.

I have to admit - I'm not a big fan of twentieth-century literature. Give me a classic written before that time and I'm rarely disappointed. But classics of the twentieth-century? Rarely enjoyable. They tend to either fall into the overly flowery and eccentric style of Woolf or into the overly simplified and boring style of Hemingway. There are of course exceptions. I love The Great Gatsby and I surprisingly enjoyed Drieser's Sister Carrie. But for the most part, they just aren't my cup of tea.

I felt that The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was hampered a bit by both styles. Her writing felt overly simplified for me and didn't sweep me along. She didn't seem to vary her sentence structures, and the overall language was somehow lacking. But, she didn't fall firmly in the Hemingway camp. She jumps around within sections to different time periods, making use of a style more in the Woolf camp. It was never really confusing, but it seemed out of place, and almost lazy. Lazy may actually describe the whole book rather well - it's like she just sat down for an afternoon and thought up a story, but didn't put any effort into the actual writing part of it, or story organization, or overall development. That may also be why it's so short. It's just 137 pages in my edition.

But despite the issues I had with it, I enjoyed reading about Jean Brodie and the Brodie set. Miss Brodie was a teacher during the 1930s and had a group of girls she picked out of her class to raise up above the rest. She taught them about art and culture and life instead of just English, history, and math. She went a bit off in telling her 10-year-olds about her own love life though, and years later in encouraging one of the girls to sleep with a teacher. That made me start identifying with the headmistress who wanted to rid of Miss Brodie instead of with Miss Brodie herself. I did like how the book doesn't seem to unabashedly praise Miss Brodie though. It does celebrate her teaching the girls culture, but I think Spark shows her going wrong a bit too.

Another aspect I found interesting was that Miss Brodie praised Mussolini and taught her students about the wonderful changes he was making in Italy, and later she praises Hitler, and she travels to both Italy and Germany throughout the book. The story takes place before the evil of those men was evident, and it was interesting to think about people who supported them early on.

In the end, I had mixed feelings about this book, and it's hard to really say if I liked it or not. I may check out the 1966 movie version - it stars Maggie Smith, who I absolutely adore, and she won an Oscar for it.

The Alchemist

2010-03-18T19:39:00.000-05:00

I was predisposed to dislike The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It was so overhyped a few years ago, and I new it had to do with alchemy and the Philosopher's Stone and I honestly thought it was some sort of adult Harry Potter rip off. So why I picked it up at a library book sale, I don't know. But I had a nice surprise once I started reading!

First of all, the book was actually written in 1988 and first pubilshed in English in 1993. So I was clearly way off base with the Harry Potter comment! Oops. And while it received newfound popularity here in the U.S. just a few years ago, he was doing fine before then.

It's also not really about alchemy. The whole book is more of an allegory than a novel, and alchemy represents using your dream to turn a regular life into a great one. I did feel the book was inspirational, and I loved the first half of it. But, then I got bored. I don't really enjoy allegory, and I got really annoyed by the words Personal Legend. They appeared approximately 298 times in the slight 167 pages.

There was a quote I thought was awesome though: "[E]very day was the same, and when each day is the same as the next, it's because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises."

How great of a quote is that? And it relates to what I did like about the book - the idea of pursuing your dreams and valuing your opportunities. And yet overall it just fell flat. Part of it may have been the overly simplified writing style, which was very monotonous. That may be a translator issue, but it still bothered me.
So, overall, it wasn't a terrible book, but it didn't really grab me either. I'm glad I read it, but it's going in the sell to Half-Priced Books pile.

La's Orchestra Saves the World

2010-03-13T20:35:00.000-06:00

Finally! I feel like I've been in a bit of a reading slump lately, where I'm not really interested in whatever book I've picked up. I returned a bunch of half-read books to the library yesterday. They weren't bad necessarily, I've just had a hard time getting into them. Fortunately, I loved La's Orchestra Saves the World: A Novel by Alexander McCall Smith.

I've seen this book reviewed on a few book blogs and was struck by the title and the cover that doesn't seem to fit the title. It's about a woman in England during WWII and how her life must go on inspite of the war being fought. Although the war plays a role throughout the novel, it's not exactly a war novel. It's more like Little Women - you know the war's going and it clearly affects the characters and story, and yet it's in the background. And I think that's how many of our modern wars are. They affect us, but mostly in the background, unless you or a close loved one is in the military. And that's what a lot of the book is about. Life must go on, even during war. You have to keep living your life, even though it's hard because you know others are out there fighting for you.

It's also about how the little things in life make a difference. La starts an orchestra to keep the local military and townspeople occupied and give them a bright spot to look forward to, and something beautiful in the midst of something ugly. Does her orchestra really save the world? No, but does it improve the lives of those involved? Absolutely.

It made me think of last year at work, when we went through layoffs. Seeing your friends laid off is terrible, and not being sure if you'll be next makes it even worse. You feel like you can't control anything, especially when the people you see losing their jobs are smart, hard working, wonderful people. We also had many projects cut or put on hold during that time, and everyone started doubting if they were making any kind of difference and wondering what the point of working hard is. I created a silly little sign for my office that simply said: Today is a good day if I helped a coworker and I helped something in the field. That's it. Look at the small things. Did I make a coworker's day better by asking her about something going on in her life or offering to help with something? Did I make someone laugh, or answer someone's question? Then I made a difference. It was a small thing, but that got me through that time and kept me from dwelling on all the things I couldn't change.

I also felt that McCall Smith does an excellent job writing with a woman as the main character. I completely identified with her, and she seemed really real to me. I think that can be hard to do period, so I'm always extra impressed when someone can write so strongly about the opposite sex.

Finally, I loved the relationships in the book. It tells a story about how someone can effect your life and be part of a powerful romantic relationship without ever actually dating/kissing/making love. I know I have someone like that in my past, and in so many ways he is so much more important that most of my actual ex-boyfriends or random guys I kissed. And yet we never went on a date and actually only saw each other in person a handful of times. We met at a camp when we were 15 and had this weird instant connection. I lived in a suburb of OKC, he lived in a suburb of Tulsa. We actually managed to stay in touch, surprising in the days before free long distance and high-speed internet. He sent me roses on my sixteenth birthday, we saw each other the next two years at camp, and he came to see me once. And yet I was closer to him than I was to boyfriends I saw every day. Maybe it's because the other stuff wasn't there to get in the way and we actually had to talk. But this book reminded me of that, and I enjoyed reading a love story that felt more real to me than most fictional love stories. It also admitted the importance of relationships that are hard to define.

Oh, one more thing! This book made me want to go live in the English countryside. I already wanted to live in a cottage in England, but this book just added fuel to the fire. McCall Smith did a great job describing Suffolk and made me want to live there. I also thought it was interesting that he talked about how many of the people who live there have never been to London. How can you live in England and not have been to London? That seems crazy to me, but of course it's true that many of the country folk have probably never gone, especially back in the 30s and 40s.

I'm glad it McCall Smith has a fairly long list of other books, so I will definitely be checking those out soon!

Shades of Grey

2010-03-11T18:07:00.000-06:00

Shades of Grey: A Novel

I love Jasper Fforde, probably even more so because I discovered him at the City Lights book store in San Francisco, and I remember that each time I read one of his books. Shades of Grey got mixed reviews, so I lowered my expectations before reading it, which probably in part helped me enjoy it more.

It is very different from Fforde's other novels, but it's still eccentric and satirical and funny and slightly absurd and mysterious. I do think his Thursday Next books are better, but of course those would be to any book lover since they feature so many much loved characters. I do feel like his writing might actually be stronger in this book though and that there was more of an overall plot instead of a lot of really weird instances that are tied together by a thread. But it didn't have quite the same charm, although I still really enjoyed it.

I noticed quite a few similarities between Shades of Grey and The Giver, which is one of my all-time favorite books. They are still very different books, don't get me wrong, but things just kept reminding me of The Giver.

For instance, the idea of color. In the future world of Shades of Grey, people only see one color. So, you have Reds who can only see shades of red, Purples who can only see purple (and blue or red depending on their percentage levels), and Greys who only get shades of grey. In The Giver, the people have forgotten how to see in color, and one of Jonah's memories that the Giver gives him is of color, especially red. The main character, Eddie, in Shades of Grey is a red, and both Jonah and Eddie see the girl they like has red hair at pivotal moments in their growth.

Also, the societal rules reminded of The Giver, and just the overall feeling more than a bunch of specific instances. Both books are about societies that have forgotten their pasts. I think that's one of the reasons why I like them both - I love history and think it's important to learn from the past. The societies in both books can't do that because they've forgotten their pasts. In Shades of Grey, they know that there was "Something That Happened" that caused the end of the Previous, but no one knows what that was now. In The Giver of course, all the memories are given only to the Giver because it would be too dangerous for everyone to know all of that information. I mean, we don't want people to potentially be sad or upset about anything right? Ignorance is bliss.

I'm glad I happened to flip to the back of the book before I started reading, and noticed that there will be a Shades of Grey II and III. If I hadn't known that going in, I might have been frustrated by the lack of answers. It's sort of like watching Lost. The more you read the more questions you have. So, hopefully we'll find out what the Something That Happened was. And why spoons are so stinking important. And hopefully we'll find out what the heck is going on with the Losties and have all 192 of our remaining questions answered in the next nine episodes.

Anyway, I do recommend this book if you're a fan of Fforde's, just know going in that it's quite different from his norm. If you're new to Fforde and maybe think he's a little too weird for you, you might actually like this one. And if you liked The Giver, and who doesn't, then give it a try. (Seriously, who doesn't like The Giver? I read it for the first time in English class when I was 14 and I've never seen a classroom of people debate something with such passion, not through my entire schooling, including getting my MA in English, and I can still discuss the ending with some of the same friends I read it with the first time. That's a powerful book.)

Friday's Child

2010-03-03T20:13:00.003-06:00

Hmmm. So I can't seem to get the name of this book right. I keep calling it Friday's Girl. Even when I'm looking at the cover. And that's the name I submitted to The Classics Circuit apparently. Oops. I'm actually reviewing Friday's Child by Georgette Heyer.

If you're a Heyer fan I would turn away now.

I hate to bash a book I read because of The Classics Circuit, and I don't want to cause others to turn away from the rest of the Circuit, so please view my review as just that - MY review. Others seem to be enjoying her, and you might too.

But I didn't. At all. I actually couldn't even force myself to finish it. I tried again tonight to actually finish it before I wrote the review because I didn't think it was fair to bash it when I haven't even read the whole thing. But I just can't take any more.

I hated everything about this book. Her writing. Her language. Her characters. Her lack of any sort of interesting plot. And the fact that she's constantly promoted as some sort of second coming of Jane Austen. How can anyone who has actually read Jane Austen say that?!?! That's completely asinine. She writes about the same time period, and that's the end of the similarities. Her writing style is dreadful. Dreadful! And her language just seems like she's trying to hard. She's billed as being historically detailed, but I feel like she just tried to cram as many random words from the time into each sentence as possible, to the point of being unreadable. (From dreadfulness, not from lack of understanding of the words) And she also uses a lot of words that I've never seen in any books actually from that time period, such as "ton." You see that in every romance novel set in the Regency period, but I've yet to come across it in an actual authentic book of the times. You do frequently see "Beau Monde" though, which means the same thing, or even the full French phrase "le bon ton" but never just "ton". That just seems odd to me, like they're trying to trick readers into thinking they're using words of time period when maybe they aren't and they're just trying to hard.
On to the characters. I read a 129 pages and still would forget who Sherry was. Sherry was the main character. How is it even possible to forget that, especially more than once?!?! I sometimes forgot twice in one sitting! I kept up with War and Peace in a bad translation, so I know that wasn't just poor reading on my part. All of her characters were entirely forgettable, and were either horribly boring or overdone caricatures. I wished I was reading one of those weird Austen-monster books and zombies were going to pop out and eat everyone. None of the characters were likable. They all seemed completely stupid, like the characters in a dumb slasher flick. Shallow, insipid, and boring. And apparently Heyer's known for her characters? I'm so confused. I kept thinking, since I keep getting the title wrong, maybe I've got the wrong author? No? Hmmm.
And finally the plot. Since I didn't care about any of the characters, the plot had little chance of interesting me, but still. It was awful, and fairly non-existent. Which could be fine, but it was written in a way that made it seem like things were happening constantly, because there was no inner portraits of the characters or anything else, only action, but then there was no actual plot to tie the action bits together. And the book starts by seeming to focus on one character, then abruptly switches gears, then switches gears again, sort of. It's just odd, and very disjointed.
If you want to read Regency-era romances about the Beau Monde, read Julia Quinn. She is a million times better than Georgette Heyer. She's a better writer, will make you laugh, creates actually memorable characters, and spins quite entertaining plots. She still uses the word "ton" a ton though. If you're interested in what others have to say about Heyer, check out The Classics Circuit.

Four-Month Reading Challenge Part Three

2010-02-28T19:57:00.018-06:00

She Read a Book is hosting a four-month challenge part three! I'm trying to read the unread books I own this year, so I'm going to try to accomplish this challenge with as few library books as possible.

230/250

5 Point Challenges

Read a book by an author you’ve never read before - The Alchemist

Read a book with a one word title - Cranford

Read a book with an animal name in the title - The Cricket in Times Square

Read a book with a proper name in the title - The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Read a fantasy - The Good Fairies of New York

10 Point Challenges

Read an ‘Austenesque’ book - Intimations of Austen by Jane Greensmith

Read a book with a two word title - Big Boned by Meg Cabot

Read a book that is part of a series - Living Dead in Dallas

Read a book about a real person - Fall to Pieces by Mary Forsberg Weiland

Read a mystery - The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley

15 Point Challenges

Read a book written in the 60’s (any century)- We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Read a book with a number in the title - 100 Worst Bosses by Jim Stovall

Read a book by an author born in March, April, May or June. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger - June 13

Read a book with a three word title - Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

Read a book by an author with three names - La's Orchestra Saves the World by Alexander McCall Smith

20 Point Challenges

Read a book with over 500 pages - The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

Read a book with a four word title - Heart of the Matter by Emily Giffin

Read a book by two authors - Nanny Returns by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus

Read a book written in the 70s (any century)

Read a book that has been number one on the NYT Best-sellers list - House Rules by Jodi Piccoult (March 21, 2010)

Four-Month Challenge Part 2 Wrap-Up

2010-02-28T19:27:00.002-06:00

The four-month challenge part two is over! It ran from from Nov. 1, 2009 to Feb. 28, 2010. She Read a Book is hosting the four-month challenge part three if you want to join in for the next round.

I enjoyed participating in this challenge, although I wish had managed to finish it completely. I noticed that only one person actually finished it though, so I'm in good company!

5 Point Challenges
Read a book with a proper name in the title – Chang and Eng by Darin Strauss
Read a book about a queen or king – The Six Wives of Henry VIII by Alison Weir
Read a book by or about/related to a Bronte - I started The Bronte Myth but haven't finished it.
Read a book about Vampires - Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
Read a book by V.C. Andrews – Flowers in the Attic
10 Point Challenges
Read a book by Canadian author – The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Read a book by or about/related to Charles Dickens - The Man Who Invented Christmas
Read a book set in France - French Milk by Lucy Knisley
Read a book by Georgette Heyer - I started Friday's Child, but haven't finished it.
Read an ‘art’ themed book.
15 Point Challenges
Read a book with a Civil War theme (any country)
Read a book with characters inspired by King Arthur or about King Arthur/Camelot
Read a biography/autobiography – Stolen Innocence by Elissa Walls
Read a book related to or something by Shakespeare
Read a book by an author born in November, December, January or February – Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, born Jan. 25
20 Point Challenges
Read a book with a wintery theme (Christmas, snow, ice, freezing, star, camel, mistletoe, etc.)A Christmas Carol
Read a book that was a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction – Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Read a book that begins with A and one that begins with Z
Read a book from The Modern Library Top 100 – To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Read a book and then write a review – The Guinea Pig Diaries by A.J. Jacobs

160/250 points

My two favorite books I read for this challenge are Chang and Eng and The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. I absolutely loved both of them!

Marriage Most Scandalous

2010-02-27T17:15:00.002-06:00

Yes, I seriously read a book called Marriage Most Scandalous. And I'm blogging about it instead of keeping it a deep dark secret. Is it weird to anyone else that my mom keeps both my grandmother and I in constant supply of racy romances? Anyone else have a mom who does that? Well, since my grandmother reminds me of the grandma in the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovitch, I don't really know why that still surprises me.
Anyway, I did in fact read, and enjoy!, Marriage Most Scandalous. For the most part anyway. I read it on Monday, which was the day after I got home from my conference. I took a nice long hot bath, which is appropriate since that's what's depicted on the cover, and relaxed with it. I really liked the two main characters and the story had an interesting plot. A man unknowingly sleeps with his best friend's new wife, they duel, man accidentally kills his best friend in duel, and is banished from the country. His pretty neighbor tracks him down years later and convinces him to come home because someone is trying to kill his father. They solve the mystery and fall in love.
I just really wish the book had ended a little earlier. They had a perfectly reasonable plot going, I cared about the characters, and was invested in them, and then she whips out this crazy plot twist that makes zero sense. She had a perfectly reasonable and still somewhat surprising ending going and bam! She throws in all sorts of craziness that completely took away from the heart of the book. And this is why people mock romance novels and soaps. Oh well. It was still exactly what I needed for a relaxing bath and evening after working 16-hour days all week.

The Black Tower

2010-02-27T15:28:00.005-06:00

I have to admit I was disappointed by Louis Bayard's The Black Tower. It had a lot of elements I like: mystery, historical fiction, alternative history, gritty detectives, a likable main character. But I just didn't love it. I didn't dislike it; I think I just had really high expectations that weren't met.
I had read several great reviews for The Black Tower, and many compared it to Matthew Pearl's works, which I love. There's even a quote from Pearl on the back cover singing the book's praises. And Bayard had an essay in Maybe Baby that I enjoyed, so I fully expected to love this book and be enthralled all the way home from San Diego.
But I wasn't. I think the language bothered me and kept pulling me out of the story for one thing. Bayard uses current curse words and some slang terms that startled me as I was reading and took me out of nineteenth century France and into modern America. It's an easy thing to avoid dropping the F bomb, so I was surprised he must have purposely included those and a few other words/sayings. It's a small thing, but it was really distracting.
Although the storyline idea was good - the son of King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette was imprisoned during the revolution and was thought to have died in a tower, but this book asks, "what if he didn't die?" Intriguing idea. And it was suspenseful until about halfway through, and then I just wasn't engrossed anymore. I took out my iPod and listened to music for a while and just stared out the window, which I never do on a plane. I had other books with me, but I didn't pick up one of those either, so perhaps I was just exhausted from the conference and not able to focus and it didn't quite get a fair shake. Anyway, I kept flipping back and forth between reading and not-reading it the rest of the trip and finished it just as we hit the runway in Oklahoma City.
Has anyone else read any Bayard? Did I not give him a fair chance? I'm curious since I fully expected to love the book.

Olive Kitteridge

2010-02-27T13:37:00.006-06:00

I ended up enjoying Olive Kitteridge, but I must say it's not the best book to select for traveling across the country away from your husband for the week. Although it was more appropriate than The Pilot's Wife, which I also read on a plane traveling away from my husband.
Anyway, Olive Kitteridge is the Pulitzer Prize winner by Elizabeth Strout. It's a series of interconnected short stories. I must admit, my usual perception of short stories is that they are stories that aren't good enough to make into a whole novel or that the author is a bit lazy and just didn't feel like developing it. Clearly, there are exceptions, I enjoy reading Poe for example, and Shirley Jackson. So I realize I'm not being fair, but I still have a tendency to think that. I have an anthology of short stories that I don't even remember buying (I probably got it a library book sale) and have never read, so maybe I'll give them a try to beat down that perception for good.
Olive Kitteridge was a good selection for starting to change my mind about short stories. I enjoyed seeing different sides of certain characters and getting snapshots of life in this small town in Maine. And in reading the author interview in the back of my copy Strout points out that the reader needs breaks from Olive once and a while. The format was also nice for traveling because it was easy to stop at the end of a story during all the starts and stops you have while flying.
Why I say it was not the best choice for reading when I was traveling away from my husband is because it was rather depressing. You can't even count on your own family to be there for you when you're sick or dying. Olive worries about dying alone, and every time I see another statistic on how women live longer than men in the U.S. I worry about that too. And I felt like Strout cut down all of the solutions people turn to to avoid that fate. Olive's son moves away and never visits, friends die, volunteer work doesn't fulfill her the way it's supposed to. In all, I was left with a feeling that it's all hopeless and nothing matters. It just made me want to run to Ryan and give him a big hug and I couldn't do that because I was on a plane to San Diego. Fortunately, since I was on a place to San Diego, I at least had beautiful scenery to greet me and clear my mind instantly.
One last thing - Strout is a master at beautiful, lyrical language. That alone made it worth reading, and it reminded me a bit of Woolf in that sense. But, there were a few times where it was almost too much, and I would think, "Wow, she's really going for the Pulitzer with that paragraph!" Then it became a little distracting. But, overall I did think it was well written and I ended up really enjoying it.

Enchanted

2010-02-27T10:50:00.003-06:00

After reading High Society by Donald Spoto and loving it, I picked up Enchantment by him at the library. Enchantment is a biography of Audrey Hepburn, my favorite actress. Since I like Hepburn even more than I like Grace Kelly and I enjoyed Spoto's work, I expected to love Enchantment. But I didn't. Maybe I set it up for failure by expecting too much, or maybe I just lost interest because I was already familiar with Hepburn's life.
My now husband, then boyfriend bought me a book on Hepburn for my birthday the first year we were dating. It's full of beautiful photos and her basic life story. Since it was more about photos, I expected to find out more information from Spoto's book, but I don't feel like I learned much new information, and most of what was new to me was negative. I knew Hepburn had relationships with a few costars such as William Holden, but the book was rather full of affairs and failed relationships. Those were discussed in a rather unflattering manner. I felt like Spoto put Grace Kelly up on a pedestal and tried to knock Hepburn down a bit.
I did enjoy the first few chapters about her childhood. I knew she had suffered as a child during WWII, but this gave many more details than my glossy coffee table book did.
I surprisingly didn't enjoy reading about her movies as much. I think Spoto focused too much on some of the details around the movies that had nothing to do with Audrey to the point where my mind would wander and I would lose interest. I like getting a bit of behind the scenes info, but I felt like he just got off track a few too many times.
I am glad he praised my all-time favorite Hepburn movie, Paris When It Sizzles. It's hilarious, and it's the movie that made me fall in love with her. It doesn't get much press, and when it does it seems like people don't get that it's supposed to campy. She's wonderfully funny in the movie and encourage you to check it out if you haven't seen it.
But for this book, I think there are probably better biographies of Hepburn out there. Spoto has written a ton of old Hollywood biographies, and I will still pick up some of his about people he likes more, such as Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock came up frequently in both the Spoto books I read and you can tell Spoto worships him, so I think that would be a stronger book, as well as his biography of Marilyn Monroe. So, I still plan to pick those up some day.

I'm back!

2010-02-25T22:03:00.004-06:00

I'm back! My conference was more draining the usual since we had a much smaller even crew than normal, and I had a TON of work waiting when I got back to the office, so I've barely had time to breathe much less read or blog this week. And my Google Reader is out of control, although I've tried to read through some of them and make at least a couple of comments this week, but that's about the extent of my reading in general this week. Things are going really well at work, I'm just mentally drained from answering questions and writing and proofing at work this week to do much of anything except watch the Olympics and night and catch up on my shows from last week. The massive amount of Olympic hockey games this week hasn't helped either.
But, I did manage to read one book on the way to San Diego and one on the way back, and I have a review I didn't write of a book I finished right before my trip, so I'll get that written as well. By the end of the weekend I plan to have those three posts written, finish and write about the Lord of the Rings (which I should be posting tomorrow but will not be finishing that quickly), finish at least two of the library books I'm in the middle of, make a dent in my laundry and actually unpack, clean out my work inbox and catch up on my Google Reader. Yikes! Or maybe I'll just lounge on the couch with my cats! Especially since I'll have four more hockey games to watch. I really want to catch up though, and I really want to clean up my library pile because my goal is to finish this current stack and then try to read my own books for a while instead of being distracted by all the library books. I do not need to have 20 books checked from the library when I have a ton of unread books at home. My goal is to read through most of my unread books by the end of the year. I realize "most" is a rather vague goal and I should probably be a little more concrete, but I don't really want to count the number of books I own that I haven't read. I've gone to too many library book sales!
Anyway, welcome back, and I promise I'll have real posts by the end of the weekend!

Missing in Action

2010-02-12T17:23:00.003-06:00

My husband called just a little while ago and told me our wireless internet router died. And we won't be able to get another one until Sunday due to his work schedule. So, no blogging for me until Monday. :(
Then I head to San Diego on Tuesday and won't be back until the following Sunday, so I probably won't be blogging much for the next week. I just didn't want to you to think I've disappeared.
Don't be too jealous of my trip to San Diego. It's for business, and I'll be on the event crew working 14-hour days (at least) most days. Downstairs at 6:00 a.m. and not wrapping up until 8:00 p.m. most days. And Saturday we have a big gala at night, so I work until somewhere between 10 and midnight after starting my day at 6:00 a.m., with a couple of hour break in the middle of the day for a quick nap and getting ready for the formal that night. It's fun overall and I enjoy seeing all of our company's franchisees, but it's a bit tiring so the blogging probably won't happen much. People who think event planning is glamorous are wrong! :) It's a lot of aching feet and putting out fires. I'm glad I just help with our events and am not a full-time event planner.
Anyway, I will rejoin the blogging world as soon as I can! Happy reading in the mean time.